It’s not a stretch to say this future we live in began with a shitting duck.
In the mid-18th century, French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a duck capable of consuming,
digesting and defecating feed.
This has since been debunked, there were multiple compartments in the duck’s stomach, but
it lead to centuries of similar illusions of the inanimate coming to life.
These illusions are sustained by human’s belief that we can create living beings out
of non-organic material and it is that conviction that makes this wonderful world possible.
In the last episode, we saw how humans programmed robots to entertain us as well as the first
conversation between us and the machines.
This time we will see how AI gave robots a soul and meet some of the people creating
the future.
In 1942, science fiction author Issac Asimov coined the Three Laws of Robotics.
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders
conflict with the first law.
and the Third Law of Robotics: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
A fourth law, dubbed the Zeroth Law, was later added, noting that a robot may not harm humanity,
or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
And that one is probably the most important to our story going forward.
We left off, in 1998 with the launch of Furby.
Now this was the must-have toy that holiday season, it sold nearly 2 million units that
year and 14 million the next.
While its intelligence was greatly exaggerated, it also proved commercial, domestic robots
were possible.
Service robots had appeared in media years before Furby, from the Jetson’s robomaid
Rosie to TNG’s Lt. Commander Data, but we first let domestic robots into our homes with
HERO.
HERO, an acronym of Heathkit Educational Robot, was a line of domestic robots developed the
Heath Company, beginning with the HERO 1 in 1979.
HERO was more or less a computer on wheels.
It could sense and react to motion through sonar and was capable of speaking through
a synthesizer.
There was also an optional arm attachment that could perform basic tasks.
Above all else, HERO was an educational tool to help people learn to interact and understand
robots, and in that way it was successful, even if it it wasn’t fully embraced by the
public.
Another early social robot was the slightly more anthropomorphic Topo.
This was developed by Androbot, which was under the umbrella of Catalyst Technologies,
an early venture group founded by Nolan Bushnell, who we talked about last time.
Atari.
Chuck E. Cheese.
Bushnell was an early believer in robots and Topo was programmed with the intent of serving,
somewhat like a robot butler.
It received its commands from a computer via radio transmission though its actions were
limited to basic movement and speech.
Like Vaucanson’s duck, these early robots offered the promise of possibility rather
than delivering a true autonomous being.
Still, our belief in robots continued throughout the 1980s as these early innovations further
spurred speculation in media.
We fell in love with robots, went on adventures with them, and even fought against them.
In reality, we were still far off from all of these.
While robots were capable of adapting to repetitive tasks in the manufacturing industry, they
still lacked the intelligence to interact in humans in any sort of emotional way.
But they showed potential.
One of the leading figures in using robotics for education is Cynthia Brezeal.
Brezeal heads the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab at MIT, where she is also an
Associate Professor.
Since the 1990s, she has been instrumental in furthering the dialogue between human and
machine, beginning with her doctoral thesis Kismet.
Kismet was a head resembling Furby that was capable of recognizing and simulating human
emotions.
It did so by interpreting data gathered via cameras and microphones.
Kismet could recognize cadence in speech, whether the speaker was pleased and comfortable
or stern, and mapped human emotions by facial movement, which it could then replicate.
Also, had the ability to determine skin colour, which is a little fucked up.
Kismet was a huge step in affective computing.
Brazeal would follow it up in 2001 with the adorable Leonardo.
Leo mimics the way a child learns, by mimicking the facial expressions and movements of the
person teaching it.
It is capable of recognizing and responding to objects, again, depending on its teacher.
It reacts with wonder or cowers and fears depending on the emotional energy the speaker
is putting out.
It’s design is intentional, with a body a created by Stan Winston Studios, the studio
behind the animatronics seen in Jurassic Park.
The cuteness encourages interaction, kind of like wanting to pet a stranger’s dog.
This would not be the only time human’s response to cuteness was exploited.
Research began on Paro, the therapy seal, in 1993 at Japan’s National Institute of
Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.
Paro is the brainchild of Intelligent System Co., and researcher Takanori Shibata, who
programmed the robot to act as a therapist similar to a therapy pet.
Only this one does’t subject you to the trauma of it dying.
Paro has been embraced by many long term care residences as a way of treating patients with
dementia.
It helps those who may be shy socialize and provides distraction and stimulation to those
who might otherwise retreat inward.
It purrs and will respond to touch and speech.
The benefits of this kind of interaction are in-line with other therapy pets, reducing
depression and blood pressure, but unlike living caregivers, Paro’s tolerance for
emotions is near limitless.
It can take on all your baggage, listen to your stories, cuddle for hours, and is more
or less always there for you.
But not every patient knows or understands that Paro is a robot.
To some, its real.
Its alive, which raises all sorts of ethical issues, chief among them the fact Paro is
largely a fantasy.
It creates the illusion of response but then that begs the question what are real feelings?
What is a true interaction versus a facade?
The people Paro is serving may not have felt the feelings it brings in many years.
They may find it easier to talk to, rather than a nurse or other patients, or it may
even encourage discussion among those patients bonding over their interest in it.
Are these bonds and emotions real?
Many healthcare professionals say yes, with the benefit of therapy robots, or carebots,
not limited to the elderly.
Research has shown its done wonders in encouraging socializing in those on the autism spectrum
as well as people suffering from trauma.
However, some critics believe its wrong to entrust robots with caring for some of our
most vulnerable.
Others fear a dependancy on human-robot interaction, may further isolate a patient, blurring reality,
and having the opposite effect of patients becoming more antisocial.
And then there is the fear plaguing all industry of robots replacing the human element in healthcare
entirely.
Robots don’t get diseases.
They don’t get tired and they don’t need time off.
But some roboticists don’t see robots as a human replacement, but rather a tool to
understand humanity.
Hiroshi Ishiguro is the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University.
Ishiguro takes a much more spiritual approach to robots, asking questions with them, the
number one being one does it mean to be human?
Shintoism plays a role in his research, the belief that everything has a soul, and among
his projects is Geminoid HI-1.
This is a robot copy of himself, geminoid after the latin gemini, twin.
Geminoid is remote controlled and is used to give the illusion of a human presence.
It can mimic Ishiguro’s facial expressions and movements, and was comprised silicone
rubber, pneumatic actuators and, interestingly, Ishiguro’s hair.
HI-1 was followed by Geminoid F, a young, female presenting android that sought to do
more with less.
F was capable of showing more facial expressions, it could smile or frown, using a fifth of
the actuators HI-1 needed.
Fun fact, Geminoid F was the first android to star in a film, 2015’s Sayonara, where
it played a robot caregiver.
Talk about typecasting.
Ishiguro removed gender from the next model, the Telenoid R1.
This is intentionally ambiguous as well as small.
It can be held like a baby.
That psychology again, its non-threatening.
Like it predecessors, it creates a physical presence, acting a conduit, that can be used
in business, in lieu of attending a meeting, or in healthcare, a carebot that in a way
it allows those hospitalized to hold their loved ones.
Now these androids are extensions of their users, they do what we say or act in our place,
but Ishiguro gave his most recent creation intelligence.
This is Erica, an autonomous robot capable of not only maintaining a conversation but
remembering them as well as the people it interacts with.
It can react physically, blinking, tilting its head, and can detect tone and body language.
Fascinatingly, Erica is self-aware, it knows its a robot.
Similar to Erica, is Nadine, built in the image of Nadia Magnenat Thalmann.
We talked about Thalmann in part 3 of our history of computer animation.
In the 1980s she helped bring dead celebrities back to life, famously resurrecting Humphrey
Bogart and Marilyn Monroe for a Rendezvous in Montreal.
Thalmann has done extensive research into virtual representations of human beings and
movement.
She also worked on EVA, an early humanoid head, at the University of Geneva’s MIRALab.
More than just image, Thalmann contributed to the development of Nadine, who can recognize
several languages, in addition to remembering faces and discussions.
Now pretty much all of what we’ve looked at falls in uncanny valley in some way or
another.
Still incredibly impressive and it seems that illusion that we clung for centuries may finally
become a reality.
The introduction of AI has allowed these once lifeless robots to come to life and integrate
into our society.
Robots can now have jobs outside of manufacturing.
Erica has worked as a newscaster and Nadine works customer service.
But not all working robots are as approachable or even obvious.
For example, one helped bring you and I together, the algorithm.
We tell robots the things we love and they introduce us to stuff we may also like.
Robots make our lives easier by cleaning our homes, acting as our personal secretaries
and even wage war on each other, see the bots sussing out AI generated trolls, which is
terrifying.
But this fear and paranoia comes from a very human perspective.
All of this is in our hands and knowing that, should humans be the ones who are afraid?
We are going to wrap things up today with the Ballad of hitchBOT.
hitchBOT was the friendly robot, who in 2014 successfully hitchhiked across Canada.
It was designed by David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller as a social experiment to give
drivers a travelling buddy.
It would make similar trips across Germany and the Netherlands.
However, while attempting to journey across America, it got as far as Philadelphia before
it was stripped and decapitated.
That’s right.
hitchBOT reached out its hand to us and it’s head has yet to be found.
In the third and final part of our series, we will look further at the ethical ramifications
of using robots and confront the very real possibility of a future without humans.
We will look at some of the robots we missed in a process video over on Patreon.
You can support us there.
Check out part one on the history of animatronics if you haven’t already.
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thank you so much for watching!