Chapter 9 Quest for the sentient robot 283
1.3 CULTURAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT
19 for sale but leasing is at an astronomical price of $150,000 a month. The PR2 is priced at a staggering $400,000 with discounts for academic projects.
Nao This iconic mini humanoid was made by the French company, Aldebaran Robotics in 2006 as an open source software. The robot was acquired by Japan’s SoftBank Robotics [2]
in 2013. Standing at 58 cm and weighing 4.3 kg, it is powered by the Intel Atom processor and has an assortment of sensors, HD cameras, microphones, sonar rangefinder, infrared, tactile and pressure sensors. The robot has quite a reputation: it has acted in a ballet, been the most prolific robot in robo soccer, has been employed as a therapeutic robot for children suffering from autism, has been programmed to be the first robot with deontic ethics and also, to a degree it is the first robot to attain sentience, albeit for a very short time.
The image is from commons.wikimedia.org, CC license.
Open source has been the buzz word in the robotics community and Robot Operating System (ROS), Robotic Open Platform (ROP), Poppy and RoboEarth are projects that target crowd sourcing and thus freely provide technology and know-how.
Segway
This battery-powered, self-balancing two-wheeled scooter was developed at the University of Plymouth in collaboration with BAE Systems and Sumitomo Precision Products, and uses gyroscopic sensors and an accelerometer for maintaining balance. While not a robot as per the traditional definitions, the Segway is an early ancestor of autonomous vehicles of the immediate present and the promise of the future. At a maximum speed of about 12 miles per hour, it is ideal for the golf course and other short tours and it has also been designed into a companion robot [120]
FIGURE 1.13 LEGO Mindstormshave been very popular both as toys and teaching aids since the late 1990s. These robot kits contain sensors (touch, light and colour), motors and a processor encased in the ‘brick’ and can be programmed with various programming languages. Both these images are of robots built with the NXT kit. Both images courtesycommons.wikimedia.org.
kits, as shown in Figure 1.13 or watching ASIMO dance to a tune, are situations when robots contribute to entertainment and recreation. In academia, readily available open source simulators and software for robot has fueled robotics research in universities and hobbyists, such as MORSE [100] shown inFigure 1.14. On the other hand we have the the prophecy of singularity and a Terminator-like doomsday scenario where intelligent machines take over the earth, which is a script for various science fiction potboilers. In this section, I look into the fiction, movies and popular opinions on robots, utilities of mobile robots across various domains such as medicine, army, public interface, entertainment etc.
1.3.1 Science fiction, entertainment industry, medical surgery and military
Verne’s steam-powered mechanical elephant, Shelley’s Frankenstein and Baum’s tin man are some of the first fictional accounts of automatons. In 1940, Asimov ushered in added sophistication. His robots were electromechanical devices unlike any previous authors’.
Arthur C. Clark, Alvin Toffler and Philip K. Dick are near contemporaries of Asimov who gave us timeless classics with robotic characters. With the advent of cinematography, robots came to be synonymous with depiction of futuristic themes in movies. Lang’s pioneering direction in the 1927 silent movie Metropolis had the first robot in cinema, Maria as shown in Figure1.15. She was a metal cast female android. The three robots in Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi Interstellar, TARS, CASE and KIPP often wisecracked in slangs and sarcasm with the rest of the characters of the movie. Robots have added to the intrigue, drama, humour and fun in cinemas. Over these 90 odd years as shown in Figure 1.16, many of these robots have attained cult status, become household names and have added to idiomatic references.
Robbie in Forbidden Planet (1956) as shown in Figure 1.17, HAL 9000 in 2001 (1968), various replicant robots in Blade Runner(1982), Andrew an NDR-114 humanoid robot in Bicentennial Man (1999), the iconical star wars robots R2D2 and C3P0, as shown inFigure 1.18and Wall-E and Eva, as shown inFigure 1.19are a few to name.
Fiction with robots often traces some of the popular storylines, one where robots accept human norms and values and try fitting into human society, but are often reminded of their shortcomings. David in Spielberg’s movie AI and Andrew in Asimov’s Bicentennial Man
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FIGURE 1.14 6 PR2 in MORSE. MORSE [100] is a 3D simulator built on Blender, it was developed by LAAS, Tolouse. MORSE particularly targets human robot interaction and has bindings with various meta-platforms and middlewares ROS, YARP and MOOS.
are such accounts where the robot struggles with its own existence, trying hard to imitate human behaviour, values and cultural nuances. The second is the dystopian scenario where robots and smart AI rebel against human beings and has been the plot for Blade Runner, Terminator and Battle Star Galactica. A third brings to light the the endearing attachment between human and the robot, as seen in, Frank and the Robot and Real Steel. Robots are mostly shown to be near perfect artificial beings but with lesser appreciation for human emotions and humanly values though Replicants in Blade Runner, Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek and Cylons in Battle Star Galactica can be said to be near humans and special psychological tests similar to the Turing test had to be devised in order to distinguish between human and the artificial.
Asimov’s three laws, as shown inFigure 1.20, have been seen as an overarching principle for robots, however these three laws lack practical application and often conflict in real-life scenarios. In Chapter 8, it will be discussed that ethical principles for robots cannot be drawn from these three laws. Various leading roboticists and AI researchers have suggested that these laws are flawed and serve more as an instrument of control for human beings to reign as the superior ‘master’ race and controlling the robots as slaves. Asimov made some amends to these laws in 1985 by introducing a fourth law, the zeroeth law.
Other than movies, there have been some brave attempts to follow in the footsteps of Capek and make stage plays with robots and robotic characters, though very much still inˇ the experimental domain. ‘Hello Hi There’, a stage play directed by Annie Dorsen and first screened at Steirischer Herbst, Graz in September 2013 and subsequently across Europe and America, features no actors but two chatbots, two computer screens spitting out sentences which structures the play. The chatbots converse using materials from a script which has been taken from a famous debate on human nature between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault in 1971. The intriguing part is that the play doesn’t have a fixed plot and can play out in about 84 million different ways.
Bold and unconventional explorations to use robots in-sync with live human actors and dancers on stage are few but commendable and may be the definition of a newer realm of acting and stage performance. Francesca Talenti’s play ‘The Uncanny Valley’ [1] which has
FIGURE 1.15 Maria, the first ever robot in cinema was in Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent movie,
‘Metropolis’. Made in Weimar Germany, the movie was a science fiction tale set in a dystopian future. Shown here is a commemorative statue of the robot at the Filmpark, outside the Babelsberg studio where the movie was made. Image courtesycommons.wikimedia.org.
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FIGURE1.16Timelineforrobotsinmoviesandpopularmedia,1920—2015.
FIGURE 1.17 Robbie the Robot, in the 1954 movie ‘The Forbidden Planet’ was one of the earliest appearances of robots in movies. Robbie was designed to be a 6 foot 11 inches tall humanoid robot which could turn, twist and move around on wheeled legs. Robbie’s personality in the films original screenplay was written by Cyril Hume and made into a real robot with the effort of an art team led by the director Robert Kinoshita at a cost of about $100,000.
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FIGURE 1.18 Cometh the robot, cometh the man., Anthony Daniels played the role of C3PO the humanoid droid in the Star Wars movie series, seen here with the C3PO mask. C3PO along with its companion R2D2 have become household names and attained iconic status. Image courtesy commons.wikimedia.org.
FIGURE 1.19 Wall-E and Eva, iconic robots from the movie Wall-E, courtesyde.wikimedia.org
FIGURE 1.20 Asimov’s laws.His 3 laws of robotics have attained cult status among science fiction fans and roboticists alike. First formulated in 1942, Asimov later added the zeroeth law in 1985.
Though popular, the laws have been found to conflict with one another and are lacking in practical applications, Academic opinion and research into robot ethics has been more inclined towards a developmental approach than a codification of laws. More on the shortcomings of Asimov’s law is inChapter 8.
a robo-thespian robot, Oriza Hirata used a Wakamaru robot and Blanca Li’s dance drama
‘ROBOT’ had seven Nao robots dance on stage synchronously with eight human dancers.
Other than the movie and entertainment industry, mobile robotics is the heart and soul of space research. It is being extensively used in the military and medical surgery and it also bears promise for modern agriculture. A great many modern-day space programmes have a robotic rover, which is unmanned and attempts to chart an unknown heavenly body. They are usually equipped with both modes of control viz. autonomous and remotely controlled, the later used more prominently. In the military, use of robots has been hotly debated as trusting a robot with lethal capabilities may prove to be fatal. Historically, Goliath a mobile land mine was the first use of robots in the military by Nazi Germany in World War II. In recent times, the use of robots in the military is a prospect NATO and American forces have looked forward to, and in Iraq from 2004-2007 they employed unmanned military robots, SWORDS and MARS systems. Unmanned robotic vehicles have been used in times of crisis such as earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis. In medical science, teleoperated robotic surgery units such as the Da-Vinci systems, shown in Figure 1.21 is one of the miracles of robotics, which has allowed the surgeon to operate on a patient who is located a few thousand kilometers away on a different continent.
1.3.2 Do robots pose a threat for human beings?
The Vox Populii gathered over questionnaires and polls shows how people have responded to robots and their influence on their lives. A poll conducted in 2014 in the University of Middlesex with more than 2000 participants showed that more than 30% believed that their jobs will be taken over by robots; 46% felt that technology was progressing too quickly (for comfort); 35% were worried by the use of unmanned military drones; about 10% expected to see a Robocop-like police force in about a decade; 42% said ‘Yes’ when asked if teachers can be replaced by robots; 11% were ready to adopt a robot child akin to David in Spielberg’s AI; replacing a beloved animal with a robotic pet invited the interest of about 20% of pet owners; 25% opined that robots will be capable of feeling human emotions; and what might come as bizarre, nearly 20% were ready to have sex with robots. ‘Human-like’ has been a buzzword in current day human robot interactions. In a user poll in Plano, Texas, conducted
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FIGURE 1.21 Da Vinci system. Teleoperation in advanced medical systems has allowed for surgeries where the surgeon and the patient are on different continents. From Kroh and Chalikonda [190], with kind permission from Springer Science and Business Media.
by Hanson Robotics, the participants were shown images of two different robots that were programmed to imitate known human-like emotions, expressed by facial expressions. This effort met with an overwhelming 73% approval; the participants did like and connect with what they saw. While in another popular poll conducted by Amazon UK and IMDB, R2D2 got voted in by over 8000 people as the ‘world’s favourite robot’. His Star Wars companion C3P0 was ranked fourth. Crossing the Atlantic, in the US, a poll from Monmouth University, New Jersey, with about 1700 participants on the concerns over the use of unmanned drones yielded interesting results: while 80% were in support of search and rescue efforts, about 67% were good with drones tracking runaway criminals and 64% conformed to drones for border control. However the participants were apprehensive about drones issuing speeding tickets and it met with only 23% approval. In context of human approval and level of comfort with an ensuing human-robot interaction, an online poll by robohub exploring the tradeoff between privacy vs. automaton of using robots, the poll asked the participants, ‘What level of autonomy would you be comfortable with in a bathing robot’. Bathing robots for the elderly have been considered as a commercial venture by electronics giant Sanyo. The results did illustrate that human beings are rather comfortable with robots being in control while taking a bath, only 4% objected to the robots being autonomous, while 48% were at ease with the robot being in charge, 39% were comfortable giving partial control to the robot and 13% were agreeable to full-autonomy however, with human supervision.
Various of these polls dig into dystopian scenarios such as robots taking over human jobs, the Skynet apocalypse, human-AI war etc. The idea that AI poses an existential threat has fueled a debate, with the CEO of Space-X Elon Musk, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and Microsoft guru Bill Gates at one end of the debate and AI researcher Ray Kurzweil at the other end. Should we try to noose AI and tame it, so it doesn’t go out of control? An online poll by The Telegraph in October 2014 yielded mixed response as is shown inFigure 1.22: 36% responded with a ‘Yes’, that care should be taken in developing AI; 42% chose otherwise.
The threat that robots will take over human jobs is a neo-Luddite nightmare, though it is not baseless. Recent studies in the UK by University of Oxford and Deloitte have
FIGURE 1.22 Do robots pose an ‘existential threat’ ?, Results of an online poll at telegraph.co.uk in October 2014 in reaction to Elon Musk’s ‘summoning the demon’ remark.
indicated that 35% of UK jobs may be at high risk from advancing technology, automaton and robotics in the next 20 years. The other side to this debate suggests that advancing technology will lead to a new way of living which will develop newer forms of sentient intelligence. Robots have had effective human interactions as artificial pets, in the role of carer, romantic attachment and lover, organised tour guide, receptionist etc. Human-robot interaction and robot ethics are avenues of research which find application in the near future.
More on these topics is discussed in Chapter 10.