But first, for those of you who don’t know, the word “robot” comes from the Czech word “robota” which means “compulsory slave labour.”
The word first appeared in Czech playwright Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), a play about industrial machines and their conflict with humankind. This was the play that marked the beginning of robot culture.
The theme of Man vs. Machine, inspired by R.U.R., perpetuates itself throughout sci-fi, from movies like Terminator to The Matrix, to I, Robot, among others.
But in Japan, people’s attitudes towards robots are different. The Japanese imagined robots to be extensions of themselves, and were fundamentally value-neutral. They could serve both good and evil, but the matter is that good robots in the control of good forces would ultimately prevail.
This theme also perpetuates Japanese popular culture, from Astro Boy, to Transformers (yes, Transformers is a Japanese creation), to Gundam.
Robots didn’t start out looking human. The first true robots were industrial robots, usually being little more than an arm. They perform tasks deemed too dangerous or tedious for humans, their values being tireless and precise in their actions.
Gradually, robots came to look more and more like human beings. There is a term for it, called Anthropomorphism.
This is because for robot scientists, particularly Japanese robot scientists believe that robots could better serve society when they could relate better with humans. By making them more similar to humans, they bring robots closer to humans, and increase their sense of familiarity to people.
And so far, they have been very successful, with examples such as Honda’s ASIMO, and Sony’s Qrio.
But so much for an introduction, what is my post going to discuss?
What I’m going to explore is the philosophical approach in understanding robots and how they relate to us.
You see, robots can look exactly human (there are already models developed as such), but two things separates man from machine. The first is what Masahiro Mori (a robotics scientist) calls the “Uncanny Valley”, which compares human likeness to familiarity.
To put it simply, a robot like ASIMO may look less human but people are accepting of it, but a zombie, who looks more human than ASIMO, is less acceptable to humans. When this happens, we say a zombie is in the Uncanny Valley.
A robot may look human, but subtle differences between man and machine causes us to reject them.
Second, is the critical element of emotion.
I remember watching a documentary about the world of the future. There was a scene where a child of the future giving an ASIMO (by then obsolete) instructions, and having a sense of frustration when the robot could not understand the instruction. The robot could not understand the feeling of frustration in its master, only mindlessly repeat the question.
So, what does it mean for a future with robots?
When the time comes for androids to be living and working side by side with us in the world, would we be accepting of them, despite our differences, however subtle? We as humans already struggle to live with each other, having this irrelevant difference called “race”, how different would our interaction with androids be?
We are learning to cope, but have we? In Japanese companies, robots are treated with respect. New robots are welcomed in ceremonies; they are named, and are well maintained.
In the US, however, robots are still treated as what their names mean: Slaves. They work till they break.
I think for we should accept robots, which have helped us so much in our lives, doing the dirty work, plus others simply too difficult to do by ourselves, like visit Jupiter.
Because futures like R.U.R., or the Matrix, where robots revolt out of human oppression is truly scary.
And this understanding will be critical when robots have emotions. Now they don’t, and even robots today can only simulate emotion. Emotion is an extremely complex system of behavior unique to humans. It governs our interaction with people, and even non – living things.
Almost everything of our civilization is an expression of emotion. Our art, literature, language, society…
When robots have emotions, do they become human?
I don’t have the definite answer, but this video, which inspired this post, might provide some ideas.
KOKORO, by RIN (by the way,a vocaloid, actually a program)
It’s a song about a robot, which was created without emotions. But her/its scientist designed a program called “KOKORO” (heart in Japanese), an emotive program. But the program was too powerful for the robot, so the scientist warned the robot not to open the program.
Hundreds of years passed, and the program was opened. The robot recalled memories of her/its time with the scientist, and with emotions, these memories acquired meaning.
She then realized how much she loved the scientist/father, and the scientist/father loved her.
Quoting from the lyrics:
"I now know how to feel happy
...
I now know how to feel sad
...
How deep and touching they are..."
A Pinocchio story with a tragic twist.
Sometimes, robots have this ability to help us understand more about ourselves as humans.
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