How About That Thing?

Surely, I don’t have to explain what The Jetsons is to you, dear reader. It’s literally The Flintstones, but instead of terrible rock puns, we have terrible SPACE puns.

Unlike The Flintstones, The Jetsons also falls victim to the glories of retrofuturism. AKA, making predictions about the future, and being horribly wrong. IE, no conveyer belt sidewalks, no flying cars, and the closest thing to a robot maid we have that I’m aware of are those Roombas. I will never buy a Roomba, however, because unlike Rosie: the delightful robot housekeeper, Roomba is gathering information about your house’s floor plan and layout, and selling it to the FBI. Seriously! Look it up!

Interestingly enough, though, as I go through old reruns on my recently regained MAX account, I notice that The Jetsons actually DID get a couple things right. Sort of.

We technically don’t have video phones, but we do have Zoom. I’m also pretty sure 3DTV was a thing for a while, though maybe not quite how The Jetsons imagined it. And I guess they also had something that vaguely resembles those Ring doorbells. And much like the Roomba, I will not be getting said Ring doorbells, because those give the FBI the layout of your front yard as well. Again, look it up.

And of course, The Jetsons DID manage to predict the rise of artificial intelligence, and the impact it might have on the work force. All be it not in the way we know it. Here and now, we call it ChatGPT, or Deepseek. Back in yee olden days of future past, though, it went by one simple name: Uniblab.

Uniblab technically appears in TWO episodes, but in the long run, they’re VERY similar to each other in plot.

In his first appearance, Uniblab is introduced as the new supervisor. Mr. Spacely isn’t ashamed to admit that he spent five-billion dollars on this clanker, and he ends up making George his assistant. Which basically boils down to changing Uniblab’s oil every now and then, and not much else.

Uniblab acts like everybody’s best friend. He offers to play cards during break, he agrees that Spacely is a twerp, etc. Only to run off and tattle to the boss about everything said about him. Including honest to god tape recordings of everything that was said. George, among others, get fired, but still have to finish out their shift.

Uniblab’s takeover of Spacely Sprockets could easily be an allegory for how artificial intelligence has weaseled its way into every single part of corporate America and the work force as we know it. You COULD make the argument that ChatGPT won’t rat you out for shit-talking the boss… But how do you know? Maybe they aren’t using ChatGPT. Maybe they’re using a ChatGPT like program, but with the built in exploit that makes it share all your shit talk with the boss. All so it can take your job, laugh in your face, and metaphorically take a shit on your couch.

Unlike AI, though, defeating Uniblab is easy. Just replace his standard oil with bourbon! As a result, Uniblab behaves like a drunk, malfunctions, and I’m pretty sure he explodes. If nothing else, he proves how easy it is to sabotage the robot employee, and Spacely gives everyone their jobs back.

Uniblab appears once again in an episode with a similar premise. Except instead of the workforce, now it’s the military. George gets drafted, and finds out the military purchased their very own Uniblab. Much of the same shenanigans from the first episode ensue, but with a military twist.

Much like how the first episode talked about the evils of AI worming its way into the corporate sector, this episode illustrates how it’s wormed its way into the military. It could also illustrate how the military spends billions of dollars on easily breakable equipment, because defeating Uniblab in this episode was the exact same as it was previously: replace his oil with bourbon.

On one hand, you’d think for five billion dollars, they’d have worked a way around that weakness by now… But on the other hand, it’s also possible that the effortlessness of sabotaging Uniblab could ALSO be a commentary on AI. IE, you’d be amazed how easy it is to exploit AI and get it to break its own rules. If a robot can be destroyed as easily as pouring bourbon into its fuel cell, then the software aspect can just as easily be corrupted. Whether because no one on the development side of things thought to patch this or that, or maybe because someone got lazy. Who can say.

All I know is that Uniblab, despite being a fairly innocent gag on a seriously obsolete look into the future, ended up being a more accurate representation of AI in the workplace than anybody truly realized. The Jetsons didn’t always get it right, but I’d say they definitely did with this one, and yikes.