Rocky the Dancing Robot
Rocky, the Russian Robot
How many of you watched with some trepidation the new IDOL robots dancing on to stage live last week to the tune of Rocky ? Maybe some will have laughed as one IDOL stumbled to the floor after his first steps? Some will have been puzzled as to how that could have happened. People stumble and fall don’t they? Especially older people. Not Machines. The Dancing IDOL (Get the reference to i- doll?) clearly shows they are not quite there yet. Do we know why IDOL stumbled and fell? It seems it may have been something as simple as being confused by noise interference, according to Prof Mathew Studley on Radio 4. Whilst the developer came in with a quick quip to the effect that,
“What is truly frightening is not to fall but not to be able to get back up again.”
As we watched poor Rocky’s human colleagues rush to lift him up, dragging him backwards off stage, we can only hope he gets better soon. Send in the OTs and zimmer frames asap ?
The big issue for us all, of course, is whether we really want humanoid robots in the first place ? In my novel, The Laughing Robot, my imaginary, dystopian humanoid robot, is called Henry. Henry and his big brother version, Henry2, were named after the bright red Henry hoover I had just purchased. It was the nearest thing I could find to a friendly machine. It could have been a washing machine or a tumbledryer but it was Henry the Hoovers smiling face that rang bells for me. Does the dilemma behind making machine acceptable to humans lie in something so sample as us owning them by naming them? What would you name your robot if and when you have one? Or would you sensibly decide that robots, even humanoid ones don’t need a name?
I was fortunate enough to have actually met a small size friendly robot named Pepper in 2018 at the Annual Social Services conference in 2018. Sadly, the Japanese giant SoftBank who first created Pepper in 2014, halted his production in August 2020, according to a Reuters report ‘RIP Pepper 2014-2020’ . It now seems unlikely that any new Peppers will ever roll off the production line. Pepper was developed to be a helper robot with humanlike body language, the ability to maintain eye contact and plenty of small talk. When I met him both then and on a number of later occasions, I found him to be both intriguing and likeable. So did my grandson Ben then aged four and I still have the recorded video of Pepper talking to Ben. I know that sounds odd but if you listen and look at the responses of many humans to the Peppers of this world , then you will see that many people like talking to him.
So why then was it said that there wasn’t much consumer demand ? Do humans not like humanoid robots? I find that concept both puzzling and disappointing. This raises the question of whether we want our robots, especially those who look after us, possibly even care for us intimately, wash, feed and wipe us for example, to be humanoid? Personally, I would but it seems the jury is still out on this. Views may change yet again as we become increasingly accustomed to Ai and machines doing much of the heavy and even the emotional lifting for us. On the emotional front, one can understand why some people, especially those who find making relationships hard, may prefer a robot to a human. After all, having a machine to relate to, to talk to about problems and to seek some sort of reassurance must be much less challenging. Humans after all can be unkind and perhaps even cruel but what does this mean for our future relationship with Care Robots. Humanoid or not?
Meanwhile, the Ai and human world is changing so rapidly, we are likely to need to reassess many of our commonly held beliefs and even ethics very carefully in future.
Julia Ross is currently Chair of BASW UK (The British Association of Social Workers), her views are her own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of BASW. Author of The Laughing Robot ( 2024)- a dystopian novel about robots & the care crisis