IMPACT COMMUNICATION
AND INNOVATION
AND INNOVATION
On Saturday, the 17th, Japan House in São Paulo hosted Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro for an exhibition and demonstration of his Geminoid robot, a realistic copy of the scientist that is often even used to replace him during his travels, conferences, and classes at Osaka University, where he teaches.
Ishiguro gave a presentation on his work and his relationship with robots, noting that his interest in robotics began at the age of five, primarily as a desire to better understand human beings. While adults told him he should take the feelings and emotions of others into account, he realized that wasn't really how things worked. And, after all, what are these emotions? By creating robots, the scientist could then recreate and emulate these behaviors in machines to better understand humans.
The researcher notes that while many robotics engineers are more interested in creating machines because they don't get along with or aren't interested in humans, Ishiguro goes in the opposite direction. This is why creating realistic robots is so important; through emulation and detached observation, one can draw conclusions that depend heavily on scientific knowledge beyond just engineering. It is with the help of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and other human disciplines that, combined with technology, we can generate insights into who we are and what makes us human.
Ultimately, it is through the simulation and emulation performed by realistic robots that we often fall into the trap of believing these machines are capable of feeling and experiencing emotions, just as we do as humans. For this, however, a realistic interface like the Geminoid isn't even necessary; some characteristics that generate empathy are enough for us to feel understood and in contact with these machines. An example brought up by the roboticist is the film and play titled Sayonara, by Oriza Hirata, in which a gynoid also developed by Ishiguro stars in the first cinematic and theatrical work to involve interaction between a human and a real humanoid robot.
The work, consequently, ends up reflecting on humanity, which led critics to consider the film "a dark, hopeless, and quite depressing post-apocalyptic Japanese work." While the audience at Ishiguro's lecture at Japan House felt affectionate toward the models of the robot Sota (already sold in Japan), there are realistic examples that look so much like a human being that they can cause the feeling of unease known in the field as the "uncanny valley."
The controversy, which ends up being a challenge for roboticists, goes beyond technical issues, such as the choice of materials used in making the machines or even the programming of their behavior. In general, both Ishiguro and other experts in the field prefer to stay away from complete hyper-realistic emulation of human beings, thus leaving some details that provide clues that it is, after all, a robot.
What Ishiguro also sought to highlight is how living with robots will become increasingly permanent and common in the future, at least in the next 20 or 30 years, and these do not necessarily need to be humanoids. In Japan, the scientist says, there are already several robots implemented in commercial establishments or acquired by Japanese people so they can, for example, learn English on their own at home. Ishiguro comments that, although Japanese people study English for 8 to 11 years, they usually only know how to read and write very well, but cannot hold a conversation: they are a very shy people who prefer interacting with a machine that will not make judgments or get tired of repeating and persisting in training, as opposed to a human teacher.
It is from this that the scientist highlights how, in reality, these characteristics that make robots more efficient than humans will end up causing an irremediable wave of unemployment and the replacement of human labor in the job market. Ishiguro states that, in Japan, it is already clear how this trend will actually materialize, since commercial establishments that use robots to sell products or meals are already able to obtain higher revenue: not only children, but also adults pay more attention and prefer interacting with machines. The scientist jokes, for example, about how human salespeople in clothing stores often end up being dishonest by saying everything looks good because they need to make a sale, and a robot wouldn't do that.
For the Olympics, Ishiguro comments that it is already expected that different robots will be installed in subway stations to meet the high demand from foreign visitors. Although humans are capable of learning other languages, it is a slower and more difficult process than simply implementing this system in a machine that will not only understand different languages but will also have the ease of communicating in all of them. In the tone of the scientist's comments, it is evident that he prioritizes the efficiency brought about by these technological innovations and how his countrymen are already not only accustomed to but hungry for this type of technology.
Ishiguro says, for example, that in a Japanese home it is already common to find household appliances that talk—in his own home, for example, there are at least seven that do so. For the scientist, conversation is the easiest and most efficient way to get the desired result. As a justification, he gives the example of a rice cooker, a popular appliance among the Japanese. If there is a display with only the number 5, there is no way to know what that means: are there 5 minutes left for the rice to finish cooking? Or 5 hours? Or has the rice been ready for 5 minutes? What does it mean? If the pot can talk, then it becomes much easier for us to understand.
On the other hand, what the roboticist emphasized throughout his lecture was how Hollywood movies are completely wrong about what they point out regarding artificial intelligence and robots. Unlike Western scientists like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, who have always been concerned about warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence, Ishiguro does not believe that we will one day have the world and the human species destroyed by machines. When asked by the audience about this, the engineer simply suggested that we stop taking these movies, which have nothing scientific about them, into consideration. "Humanity has already been destroyed thousands of times in Hollywood movies. I suggest you stop watching them," he pondered.
Although Ishiguro even appeared in an early scene of the film Surrogates(2009), it is Japanese works, especially those by Oriza Hirata, that the researcher points to for us to think about the relationship between human and machine and, above all, how these machines are and will be capable of making us think and understand ourselves better. At the moment, Ishiguro emphasizes that there is no truly powerful artificial intelligence that gives androids full autonomy. The engineer did not bring his kit to Brazil, which included the artificial intelligence capable of allowing his Geminoid to interact with the audience like an embodied chatbot, but there are already examples, such as the gynoid Erica, also developed by him, that possess this interpretive capacity based on both big data and neural computing for greater complexity in their functions.
Erica, in fact, has also been used as a news anchor in Japan, while his other partner, the Geminoid F used in the film Sayonara, became a case study by acting as a mannequin in a clothing store. Given this, Ishiguro problematizes how these gynoids are already occupying the position of Idols in Japan: while celebrities are expected to have an infallible appearance and performance, only a machine would truly be capable of doing so. And it is because of this substitution and the possibility of creating a robot capable of meeting all these specificities that these same androids and gynoids bring the issue of beauty ideals into debate.
As previously discussed here, including bringing up the example of Ishiguro's work, I had the opportunity to ask the scientist for his professional opinion regarding the fact that not only is the robotics industry primarily composed of men, but an overwhelming majority of realistic robots are female. One of the few exceptions includes Ishiguro's Geminoid and another android built by Hanson Robotics, but in both cases, these androids end up being copies of real men, while the gynoids are robotic creations that follow the beauty ideals defended by the media, as is the case with the EveR-1 gynoid, which was designed based on the average appearance of top Korean celebrities.
The roboticist replied that, in fact, just as most robotic voices are female, realistic robots are also mostly female because, as research points out, both adults and children feel more comfortable interacting with adult women than with men. Beyond that, it is through the creation of a machine that is beautiful and pleasing to the eye that they will perform just as their human counterparts already do because of their appearance—that is, following the same logic as old store mannequins.
In other words, Ishiguro's comment points to a direction of perpetuating the current logic within the scientific and technological sphere. With this, we understand the importance of continuing to invest in research and questioning from the humanities, so that these patterns do not continue to be echoed and multiplied in new technologies.
That is, if these machines are helping us understand more about ourselves, our emotions, capabilities, and feelings, it is also through them that we will better understand how we see others. This may, therefore, be a new chance to (re)adapt and (re)educate ourselves for better coexistence with our organic peers, rather than replacing them with their synthetic counterparts.
