Sci Fi vs Real World Robots

Robots in science fiction and how they may influence real world robots is the topic of this episode of The AI Minute. For more on Artificial Intelligence: https://voicesinai.com https://gigaom.com https://byronreese.com https://ift.tt/31WftGA... Transcript: Science fiction has a long history of showing us robots in various incarnations and manifestations. There's sort of two different variables that are tweaked in the various stories. One is the naming of the robot, in terms of how human-like it is or how robotic, and the other one is the voice and demeanor of the robot as well. You can think of the universe of Star Wars and think of C-3PO, which of course has a very roboty name but has a voice that is human and is in fact, of course, played by a human. Then you have R2-D2 who is both robotic in his name as well as in his voice. Then you have Commander Data in Star Trek, who is a robot who sort of walks in the middle of the line. He’s got a name, Data, but of course it’s not really a human name, and he talks like a human, although there are variants to it. He doesn't use contractions, for instance. Other incarnations you think of, “Danger Danger, Will Robinson” which sounds mechanical. As well as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century mechanical voices have been used. These kinds of various ways of handling this are driven by the fiction, because at the same time that we need to show that the robot is in fact a robot we also need to show other non-robotic characteristics to advance the storyline. One wonders, however, how is this all going to play out in the real world. Science fiction doesn’t just predict the world, it often drives it. Clearly Star Wars would be a different sort of film if C-3PO were named Herbert and R2-D2 were named Sam. It would add just a different tone to it. So one wonders, as we develop more and more robotic devices, how we're going to want to interact with them. I think it's certain that we're always going to want to know that we're dealing with a robot as opposed to a human, but how that is conveyed to us I still think is very much up in the air. https://ift.tt/2ZwJUow gigaom August 28, 2019 at 06:49PM