Robots can talk like us, but it doesn’t make them human
Boston Dynamics is adding ChatGPT’s new voice generation functionality to its Spot robot, the result of which an automaton that can greet people on a company visit, able to generate accents, creating hitherto unknown empathy in the world of robotics, perhaps with the exception of those “abused robot videos” that made us all take their side and see the evil human who pushed the robot, hit it with a stick, or prevented it from doing its job.
Watching Spot speak with an impeccable British accent and sporting a bowler hat and mustache may be amusing, but to be honest I am unsettled by the sight of people using ChatGPT’s voice synthesis feature to have long conversations on their smartphones with the generative assistant for everything from passing time in traffic jams to walking down the street with AirPods on, a la the movie “Her”. It’s dystopian and raises any number of ethical questions.
Of course we humans have always anthropomorphized technology. But when the advancement of this technology allows it to generate voices, as well as to carry on conversations along the lines of a personal relationship, and when this is marketed as a form of normalization by unethical companies with a history of moving fast and breaking things, then we are flirting with disaster and potentially creating psychological problems for vulnerable…
