Thus The Wall Street Journal today. “New research suggests that as robots move into more social jobs,” explains the newspaper, “the key is to give them more humanlike traits.” First, give them sweet faces. Second, give them sweet voices. Third, make them nod with empathy. But the article goes a step further by suggesting that robots should be made ever so slightly unpredictable, for that would make them more humanlike. To illustrate all this, there is a picture of a robot with a baby face and large blue eyes. It is MIT’s Next, which was designed at the MIT Media Lab not long ago. The picture made me feel creepy, indeed. If I had a robot helping me in any way, I would want it minus all the kitsch, and especially the blue eyes. And I bet that most reasonably intelligent people would feel just as I do. As for all the rest, making robots creepier could well do the trick. After all, stupidity is one of the dominant human traits. And it goes perfectly with kitsch.