Social Robots and the Human Condition
The recipe is simple: human-like body plus advancing AI. The result is a robot that emulates humans like nothing else can.
Online AI systems are increasingly fluent with words and images, but they’re limited by not having physical bodies with faces and hands. Social robots such as Sophia, Ameca and Ai-Da, which integrate a human-like body with advancing AI, don’t have that limitation.
AI specialist Yann LeCun described Sophia as a sophisticated puppet. Yes, the robot’s mechanical hardware can reasonably be called that… Likewise, our own human limbs, torsos and faces can reasonably be called puppets of the brain.
Yet fossil evidence shows that the modern human brain came into existence later than legs adapted for two-legged walking, and hands adapted for grasping and holding. So perhaps we should look at our human condition in broader terms than brain alone — in terms of brain plus body plus surroundings.
If we do this, then we begin to see the social robot as a unique emulator of humans. The emulation gives new urgency to an old question: To what extent is it possible to emulate personality without being a person?
AI systems today are increasing good at human-like use of language. Six months ago, I…
