Talking to your robot vacuum, and other boundary crossings in robotics and AI
My parents are getting a robot vacuum cleaner. A regular sensible thing to do: robot vacuums have been around for a while, there’s choice at reasonable price, it will make their life easier. But it made me pause when I realised that my parents in their seventies, not early adopters of technology by any measure, would be the first people I know to get any kind of a robot in their home.
Robots, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are a field of overwhelming opportunity and challenge. This was highlighted strikingly in the open letter by influential science and business leaders in the West against warfare AI, published by the Future of life institute, USA, in summer 2015.
Looking at robotics and AI in Japan puts you into much better mood. Japan has a long history of endorsing opportunities in automation and robotics. Robots and AI have been embraced culturally in theatre and manga since centuries; industrially robots have been commonplace for decades in manufacturing, hospital operations, and care homes. Popular attitudes towards robotics and AI, judging by the press articles at least, appear curious and accepting, also around the continuous explorations around android (humanoid, human-like) and animal-like robots. In Japan, those who lead in robotics want to highlight the angle that robots are meant to make life better for humans and bring value to society.
These opposite angles of threat and opportunity point me to what is fascinating about robotics and AI. The fields are full of boundary objects we need to come to terms with, and boundary zones we need to cross or at least re-define for ourselves, in order to develop, use or just accept robots and AI as a growing part of our everyday life. We negotiate different social, cultural and economic boundaries every day, by adjusting our thinking and behaviour. As the power of the technology evolves, and more robot objects and AI applications enter our everyday life in more mundane forms from customer service chat bots to traffic controlling, we start to negotiate our notions of robotics and AI. It’s this (mostly reluctant) process of adopting, appropriating, re-thinking and resisting, spiced with cultural flavours depending on cultural track record with robotics, that interests me and that is my topic in this blog.
So how did the robot vacuum so effortlessly cross the boundary of the home and become a conversation partner like a pet or a child, even among those seen in the tech industry as the laggards or “the long tail”? In my home country Finland, the well-known Martha Organization promotes home economics and cleanliness to an audience of grannies and granny-minded individuals, and also hosts a web forum. They discuss robot vacuums like this: “Did you already to speak to it? I say ‘thank you very much’ to mine every time the job is finished, and have a little word if it switches itself off under the sofa and doesn’t agree to come out. This will probably be easier for you, since yours comes with a remote control.”
Robot vacuums are no longer looked at as robots but as hoovers with minds of their own. (Also Dyson wants to position its vacuum robots “vacuum first, robot second”.) Unlike with, say, self-driving cars, with the vacuum robot there’s no need to change our notion of vacuuming, or change our behaviour, and the benefit is immediate and tangible. The robot vacuum helps us in a chore, makes everyday life better, and us better for having made a smart choice. Vacuum robots avoid the messy area of surrendering decision-making: the owner is still in charge of when the floors needs hoovering, and the mechanics of hoovering are the same as before.
In the case of the vacuum robot, their combination of hardware, sensors and programming is not really seen as a robot anymore but as a household appliance. What is the next boundary we will cross?