Researchers say the robot’s motor functions have been almost fully compromised by its cancer, which they speculate is probably fairly meaningful in some scientific sense.

STANFORD, CA—Theorizing that their work most likely represents a groundbreaking scientific achievement of some kind, researchers at Stanford University announced Thursday that they have made an unclear breakthrough by giving a robot cancer.


The team of oncologists and mechanical engineers told reporters that after years of research and repeated trials, they had finally succeeded in causing an aggressive form of advanced cancer to spread throughout a laboratory robot’s mechanized arm and central processing unit, noting that this landmark accomplishment probably has beneficial implications for the scientific community or society at large “or something like that.”

“Right now, what we can absolutely say for sure is that this robot has Stage IV cancer and only has two to three months left until it succumbs to the disease.”


“Diagnostic testing has confirmed that our robot has developed a high concentration of malignancies throughout its entire structural framework, which, for all we know, could turn out to be incredibly important to science,” said lead researcher Amos Cruise, noting that the degenerative disease is corroding the machine’s circuitry at a rapid rate, a development that he stated might potentially lead to further advancements in cancer research or robotics or maybe electrical engineering. “Never before has cancer been detected in a non-biological entity, which seems like a pretty big achievement to me. I mean, it took three years of experimentation just to get cancer to take hold inside a robot, and anything that requires that much effort probably ends up being pretty useful, I imagine.”

“Right now, what we can absolutely say for sure is that this robot has Stage IV cancer and only has two to three months left until it succumbs to the disease,” Cruise added. “That alone has got to be some sort of leap forward in our understanding of terminal illnesses. Right?”


According to Cruise, after introducing cancerous neoplasms into the robot’s microprocessors, the disease eventually metastasized from its motherboard to its sensor modules and chassis, an unprecedented expansion that researchers said had never been observed before and therefore would have to be categorized as a success in some sense. Just six weeks later, the Stanford team reported that the disease had completely disabled the robot’s optical and pneumatic systems in a progression that several of the project’s top epidemiologists haltingly called a watershed moment in “whatever scientific discipline covers this sort of thing.”

Additionally, sources confirmed that the rapidly proliferating disease had degraded the integrity of the unit’s electrical wiring by 70 percent, with Cruise asserting that, while such a development didn’t immediately suggest any practical applications for cancer treatment, it certainly seemed like something worth noting.


He added that initial tests have revealed that the robot’s cancer is inoperable, which he stressed was probably a pretty meaningful detail as well.

“We’ve begun administering an aggressive course of chemotherapy drugs and are putting the robot through daily radiotherapy sessions to see how it responds to the treatment, because we figured, you know, that seemed like a pretty logical thing to do at this point,” said Cruise, noting that while the robot’s condition continues to decline, monitoring its reaction to concentrated doses of toxic radiation “might be one of those things that pays off somewhere down the line.” “Meanwhile, we’re also applying for additional funding in order to someday replicate our findings in other robots by giving them cancer, and maybe some other diseases too. That’s the type of thing we usually do during projects like this, so I guess we’ll try that and see how it goes. Can’t hurt.”


“Maybe if we can build a robot that already has cancer, it could…” he added, before trailing off.

When reached for further comment, Stanford’s research team confirmed that, in what just has to be a crucial finding for artificial intelligence or possibly a related field, they have determined that the robot is fully aware it has cancer and is in constant pain.