In Futurama‘s Xmas Story, Santa Claus is a robot whom judges (almost) everyone as naughty and attempts to kill them. As Professor Farnsworth explains:
Back in 2801, the Friendly Robot Company built a robotic Santa to determine who’d be naught and who’d been nice and distribute presents accordingly. But something went wrong […] Due to a programming error, Santa’s standards were set too high and he invariably judges everyone to be naughty.
As someone not a fan of the holiday season, I thoroughly enjoy this episode. The scriptwriting is excellent, the jokes great …. and Santa Claus brutal: If he catches you after dark, he’ll chop off your head and stuff your neck full of toys from his sack of horrors.
As a software engineer, the episode is also career-affirming. What? You don’t understand. In 2801 programming errors are still made, which obviously could only be made by humans! Perhaps artificial intelligence is not replacing me anytime soon.
