TRUE-TO-LIFE ROBOTS
Pop culture’s take on artificial intelligence ranges from mild to menacing, but bots mostly mirror us
We’ve come a long way since Rosie the Robot.
Ever since The Jetsons’ house-cleaning humanoid wheeled across our TV screens for the first time a half-century ago, pop culture has tried to imagine what life would be like with artificial intelligence. From the amiable and cuddly ( Wall-E, Star Wars) to the free-thinking and manipulative ( Ex Machina and 2001: A Space Odyssey), these hard-wired droids have complex personalities that mirror their human companions.
But it isn’t purely science fiction. In fact, some of the robots we’re starting to see in entertainment are grounded in modern technology and scientific breakthroughs.
Take the human-like “synths” depicted in AMC’s new thriller Humans (Sundays, 9 p.m. ET), set in present-day London where families can buy personal AI servants. Writing the parts of the household robots, “we had long, surreal chats with Siri, testing the limits” of the iPhone assistant, says writer Jonathan Brackley. “In the show, (android) Anita’s catchphrase is ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.’ That’s the kind of wall you hit a lot when you’re talking to a machine.”
Coming up with the looks and tics of the robots, played by actors wearing green contacts, “their mannerisms were informed by logic,” Brackley says, so no gesture would ever be wasted. “They have this very deliberate, slow, flowing economy of movement,” influenced by exhaustive research he and co-writer Sam Vincent did on artificial intelligence and automation.
Ex Machina writer/director Alex Garland didn’t draw from any particular technological breakthroughs in crafting sleek protagonist Ava (Alicia Vikander), but he and the effects team placed particular emphasis on the sounds she made.
“If you remove them, she’s significantly less machine-like. It’s like turning off the volume in a horror movie; suddenly you’re not scared anymore,” he says. “The thing was just to make her very apparently a machine, so there was no ambiguity about it.”
Design-wise, Ava wears metallic mesh and a silver-plated headpiece, with her exposed limbs and torso showing the complex machinery inside. When creating the texture of her synthetic skin, production designer Mark Digby says, he looked to the material used for skin grafts on the battlefield. The mechanics of her body were loosely inspired by lifelike androids seen in Japan.
Several human-like bots have been introduced in the past few years, with a robot-staffed hotel that opened in Japan this month. But their stiff movements and lack of free will suggest we’re still a long way from beings that can pass as people, as we’ve seen in shows such as Fox’s Almost Hu
man and CBS’ Extant. Instead, we have small, personal robots such as Jibo, which cost $749 on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The company has booked about $4 million in preorders and plans to ship the first orders to buyers this year.
Jibo is a moving, 11-inch-tall robot created by MIT scientist Cynthia Breazeal, who describes it as “if R2-D2 and the iPad had a baby.” Connected through Wi-Fi and intended to be used around the house, Jibo is supposed to feel like another member of the family. It’s an invention inspired by Breazeal’s own experience seeing
Star Wars at age 10, when she was drawn to the “rich personalities and relationships” among droids. “That was a vision that forever shaped my idea of what robots could and should be,” she says.
But while “so much of science fiction says the goal is to make robots like people implicitly, I don’t think that’s a really interesting vision,” Breazeal says. “We’ve got plenty of people. What we need to think about is technology that can complement and supplement and empower us.”
That’s the goal of Paris-based robotics firm Aldebaran, though its models are more human-like than Jibo. The company has three primary robots, the most popular of which is a nearly 2-foot-tall bot called NAO. More than 7,000 NAOs are used worldwide for elder care, in research labs and in classrooms, while newer humanoid Pepper is employed in nearly 150 Japanese retailers (1,000 personal models sold out in less than a minute last month).
Pepper is designed to be an emotional companion, able to detect and react to human emotions. But unlike Ava in Ex
Machina, the goal is not to create the potential for independent thought, “as this notion usually makes people nervous,” says Rodolphe Gelin, Aldebaran’s research director. Instead, “we see emotional humanoid robots as companions assisting people with not only staying connected, but also with bringing a more human-like, natural aspect to technology.”
Should we be worried about welcoming artificial intelligence into our lives? There’s already concern about privacy and how our information is being used or manipulated. More so than savvy service bots like those in Interstel
lar or Robot and Frank, “we’re eventually going to be seeing some very interesting things happening in terms of being able to put that information together and simulate other people,” says Evan Selinger, a philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who has written extensively about AI advances.
There also is the potential to develop unhealthy emotional connections to androids, though Garland argues that’s no different from having a fondness for a car or teddy bear.
“Human-robot relationships, if they ever were to exist, could be completely dangerous, or it’s possible they could be completely benign,” Garland says. “There’s a potential for danger and for good.”
“We’ve got plenty of people. We know how to make people. What we need to think about is technology that can complement and supplement and empower us.”
Jibo creator Cynthia Breazeal