We hate robots. Ok, wait, back up. We at least think they are more evil than good. Try it yourself – “are robots” in Google nets you evil before good. Megatron has higher SEO than Optimus Prime, and it’s not just because he’s so much cooler. It cuz he evil, cuz. It do be like that.
It’s not even a compliment to call someone robotic; society connotes this to emotionless preprogrammed shells of hideous nothing, empty clankbags that walk and talk and not much else. So, me at a party. Or if you’re a nerd, you’re a robot. (Me at a party once again.)
Let’s start by assuming robots as human-like bipedal machines that are designed with some amount of artificial intelligence, generally designed to fulfill a job to free up humanity from drudgery. All sounds good so far. So why do they creep us out?
There’s a litany of reasons why, best summed up with the concept of the uncanny valley, first coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori (Wow he’s still alive! The robots have not yet won) in 1970. Essentially, we know what a human is and how it looks and behaves against the greater backdrop of life and physics. When this is translated to a synthetic being, we are ok with making a robot look and act like us to a point, where we then notice all the irregularities and differences.
Most of these are minor – unnaturally smooth or rigid movements, light not scattering properly on a surface, eyes that don’t sync up quite right when they blink, and several other tiny details. Lots of theories take over at this point about why this creeps us out. But a blanket way to think about it is that our expectation doesn’t match what we are seeing; the reality we’re presented with is off just enough and this makes us uncomfortable .
Ever stream a show and the audio is a half second off? Makes you really annoyed. Magnify that feeling by a thousand and you’re smack in the middle of the uncanny valley. It’s that unnerving. One possible term for this is abjection, which is what happens the moment before we begin to fear something. Our minds – sensing incompatibility with robots – know this is something else, something other , and faced with no way to categorize this, we crash.
This is why they make good villains in movies – something we don’t understand and given free will and autonomy, potentially imbued with the bias of a creator or capable of forming terrifying conclusions all on its own (humans are a virus). But they also make good heroes, especially if they are cute or funny. Who doesn’t love C3PO? That surprise that they are good delights us. Build in enough appeal to a robot, and we root for them and feel empathy when they are faced with hardships. Do robots dream of electric sheep? Do robots have binary souls? Bits and zeros and ones?
Professor Jaime Banks (Texas Tech University’s College of Media & Communication) spends a lot of time thinking about how we perceive robots. It’s a complex and multifaceted topic that covers anthropomorphism, artificial intelligence, robot roles within society, trust, inherently measuring virtue versus evil, preconceived notions from entertainment, and numerous topics that cover human-robot interactions.
The world is approaching a future where robots may become commonplace; there are already robot bears in Japan working in the healthcare field. Dressing them up with cute faces and smiles may help, but one jerky movement later and we’ve dropped all suspension.
At some point, we have to make peace with the idea that they will be all over the place. Skynet, GLaDOS in Portal, the trope of your evil twin being a robot that your significant will have to shoot in the middle of your fight, that episode of Futurama where everything was a robot and they rose up against their human masters with wargod washing machines and killer greeting cards, the other Futurama episode where they go to a planet full of human hating murderous robots… We’ve all got some good reasons to fear robots and their coded minds.
But as technology advances, it makes sense to have robots take over menial tasks, perform duties for the needy and sick, and otherwise benefit humanity at large. And so the question we face is how to build that relationship now to help us in the future.
There’s a fine line between making them too humanlike versus too mechanical. Pixar solved the issue of unnerving humanoids in their movies by designing them stylistically – we know they are human and accept that the figure would look odd in real life. We can do the same with robots – enough familiarity to develop an appeal, but not enough to erase the divide between humanity and robot. It may just be a question of time and new generations growing up with robots becoming fixtures of everyday life. I’m down for cyborgs too.
Fearing them might not even be bad, as Banks points out: “…a certain amount of fear can be a useful thing. Fear can make us think critically and carefully and be thoughtful about our interactions, and that would likely help us productively engage a world where robots are key players.”
Also, check out Robot Carnival if you get the chance – specifically the Presence episode of the anthology.
Ruthmarie Hicks
October 15, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Great post Lani,
Water is one of those things that we just take for granted. We assume that it will always be there which is an unbelievable act of hubris. Essential for life itself – we can survive without food for weeks, but water – just a couple of days.
Being in the east coast I tend to take water for granted. Sometimes we seem to have all too much of the stuff as the swollen remaining wetlands struggle to contain flooding. But this summer, we had a drought and it vividly portrayed how fast the normally lush (nearly subtropical) dense green foliage to brittle, dry and brown.
As our weather patterns change due to man-made climate change – it is predicted that the east coast will have more water than it can handle, while some dry areas will get wetter, most will be dryer still. That combined with population growth in desert regions is an explosive combination. Water wars may become the norm in hot arid areas where a pool in every yard is the norm.
I’ll leave everyone with this issue. The BP oil disaster was a mess. But it would have been far worse if Florida’s aquifers had been contaminated with oil because they supply fresh water to Floridians. If one of the major aquifers had gotten contaminated – your worst case scenario of waking up to unsafe, undrinkable water would not have been an all too real world scenario for millions of people.
Joe Loomer
October 16, 2010 at 8:54 am
I grew up in some pretty nasty places. My parents were diplomats – not the political appointee type – the boots on the ground, career State Department type. Every country in Africa and South America had water that was not potable. We had to boil everything, and keep iodine pills with us to purify water while on in-country vacations or emergencies. You had to boil water before you used it to clean dishes, cook, or for any purpose that might come in to human contact. Of particular note, Lagos, Nigeria. This disgusting place was once the subject of a 60-minutes special titled “the dirtiest city in the world.” We were constantly reminded that if we washed our hands with tap water, not to then turn around and stick your fingers in your mouth. My sibllings and I would take turns getting worm treatments or other bacterial infection remedies. La Paz, Bolivia – came in a close second.
Clean water – SAFE water – is no joke. I personally believe the next 9-11 may involve coordinated attacks on our water purification systems in major cities. The scenario painted by Eric could certainly come true – albeit without warning.
Navy Chief, Navy Pride