Why Are We Teaching Machines to Become Like Humans
Humans can relate better with AI algorithms and robots that look and sound like human beings. Our human herding, instinctive nature, is not programmed to respond in an emotional way to something we perceive, as different from ourselves or non-human.
Sophia and other advanced artificial intelligent robots, are not being completely embraced by society, as many people perceive advanced animated robots, as replacements for humans but I believe in time, and in a couple generations, that will change.
If you go into Google and type, Robots are,
The top searches
taking over
people too
taking our jobs
coming
taking over the world
I was recently in a McDonald’s and wanted to try out their new kiosk. As I walked up to the counter a young employee greeted me with, “you can use those machines over there to place your order.” He then pointed me towards the two new ordering kiosks.
I told him, “I had a special order and didn’t want any condiments used on my food.”
He then said, “That’s okay because you can use the machine to do special orders.”
I responded with, “Can you take my order?” and he did.
While I was waiting for my order, I went over and played with a kiosk, creating and deleting orders. Luckily, this McDonald’s wasn’t busy, so I got a chance to play around with these machines. The experience was fast and the machine did its job just fine but it had a lot of finger smudges on.
I would just like to point out, that I rarely ever eat fast food and just went in to run an interesting experiment, which I will discuss and show at a later date.
After getting my order, I asked the guy, “What do people think about these machines?”
He said, “Almost everyone uses them but we only have two machines so we also take orders at the counter when we are really busy.”
I then asked again, but what do people think about using these machines?”
He responded, “Regular customers that come in a lot or every day, are okay with them and place their order but a lot of people, about half of them, say they don’t like them because they will take over people jobs. Some people, mostly elderly people refuse to use them and prefer coming up to the counter and talk with a real human to get their food. Even if we are really busy and a machine is free, they will still stand in line and not use the machine.”
I then said, “Thanks, are you worried that these machines will take your job?”
The young man, gave me a blank look and then said, “No.”
For some reason, at that moment, the idea of a universal living wage flashed in my mind.
The 3D Smiling Employee in the Machine
I stood back and looked at these kiosks and imagined them in a few years, now projecting a smiling, happy employee in 3D, asking to help me. The 3D employee in the machine would also remember my name, if I was a regular customer, ask about my day, if it had time, in a pleasant soothing voice.
The 3D employee in the machine would also recommend something, if I was taking too long to order or if I was a regular customer, it would say, “Dave, do you want the usual or something different? I’m curious, how was our new (item name) you ordered last time, what did you think of it?”
The 3D, smiling, happy employee in the kiosk, is never having a bad day, always is happy to see and talk with a customer, doesn’t ever come into work or call in sick, never needs a vacation or benefits, always gets your order right and takes in a massive amount of data when it can.
I’m sure some people would still rebel against the 3D employee and the machine as an AI machine take over but I believe most people will actually like talking to the happy 3D employee in the machine and others will get used to it quickly.
I remember going through a Starbucks drive through last year and they had an order kiosk that had a video of a barista in the store talking to people through the kiosk. A couple of weeks later the video and kiosk was gone. I wonder what Starbucks was doing?
Look how popular Amazon’s Alexa is and it’s just a nice voice with no human features. Many people still refer to it as a her.
The movie “Her” comes to mind where the man is having a personal relationship with his app and no I’m not that close with my Alexa. What do you mean everyone has one and she treats everyone the same as me?
See my article on: Replika Cool or Creepy Artificial Intelligence
Or how about Google’s Duplex?
Humanity is Losing Touch with Nature and Environmental Generational Amnesia
As humanity is losing our ability to connect with nature and more and more people are emerging and becoming mesmerized by their digital machines and developing more of a personal relationship with them, the problems the younger generation are experiencing, as being out of touch with reality and each other, I believe, will shift towards more dependence upon technology, machines and non-human relationships.
“The AIBO studies showed that children were in some ways treating the robots as other beings. But compared to interacting with a real dog, their interactions with AIBO were not as social or deep.
“Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children’s interactions with biologically live pets,” Ruckert said. “The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call “Environmental Generational Amnesia.”
Humans Losing Touch with Nature
Virtual Reality Girlfriends are Very Popular in Japan
Many young people in Japan are becoming addicted to their virtual anime girlfriends, some have gone as far as marrying them. I’m not kidding, this will start happening in the U.S. as well but with more human looking animations and bots.
This Holographic Anime Character Could Be Your Next Girlfriend (HBO)
I will go as far as to predict that Alexa or something similar to it will start to develop a human face to go with its voice.
Otaku – (in Japan) a young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills.
Loneliness and feeling isolated and out of touch with other people, is a huge issue today in the U.S. and worldwide. I believe that it’s an effect caused from our shifting technological cyborgification trend and it will eventually trend in the opposite direction. All change is painful and at times chaotic but order does eventually come from disorder and chaos. We need to always keep in mind that AI and advanced robotics are disruptive technologies.
Like Japan, in the U.S., we do have a generation and culture that seems to be obsessed with technology, comic books and super heroes.
As humanity becomes cyborgified into our machines and lose touch with nature and each other, we will need to develop something that takes the place of human interactions and people will want to control of their own world and their sense of reality in it (like a video game). Many people will even be happy giving up control and give it to their technology. We see this happening today in mass and it’s called cyborgification.
See my articles:
Are People Merging Into And With Their Smartphones?
Is Facebook And Social Media Psychologically Destroying This Generation?
Sex Robots
There is no doubt that in the U.S. our society has a sexual compulsion that has gotten out of control for many people and even ruined a lot of careers recently.
Not a problem, because we now will have sex robots to manipulate and even abuse. Personally, I think this is a very bad idea and nothing good will come from it. What do you think?
During an online debate, last year, I asked if it would be okay to torture a robot because it’s not human. To my surprise, many people said, that they wouldn’t but felt people should be able to do whatever they want with a robot because they own it and it’s not a real person.
Some researchers are finding that we are able to build the same human emotional bonds with robots as we do with people.
Check out the BBC article: Is it OK to torture or murder a robot?
One big question? How will a human woman or even a human man, be able to sexually compete with this thing, especially as it evolves?
My Closing Thoughts
Robots and basic voice pattern algorithms like Alexa are here to stay and are going to look and sound more human. In fact, I predict within the next 10 years, people won’t be able to tell the difference between an advanced robot with AI or a real person. This is like Disney animation and animatronics on steroids and it can easily be created for video because the technology is getting better and more life like all the time.
Imagine, how many people using social media, look at a profile, see a human picture and think they are engaging or having a conversation with a real person, when in reality, they could be talking too and getting emotionally reactive with a bot?
The real truth is, most people don’t want or need AI robots that are smarter than them, they want companionship and something that will listen to them, respond with affection and concern and make them feel like they have a purpose for being here is this world.
What I’m talking about here, is not large enterprise, corporate, power and data hungry, AI algorithms that are used to control the conversation, someone’s interest and buying habits on the network. It’s about a shift in human consciousness wanting to merge with and eventually become like the machines the masses are already addicted to and having relationships with.
Think about this, the next time you get that like on your selfie or a kind caring message from someone in your network and that Dopamine High that makes your day. It might not be a real person but does anyone really care? If we are getting what we are craving and it makes us feel good, do or should we care if it’s human or non-human. There is always a dark side though and manipulation in any form, is not a good thing.
As human biological machines, our track record for getting along with each other and different cultures isn’t the best. Most people today, are hardwired towards being emotionally reactive and defending their environmental programmed beliefs, regardless of how illogical or unreasonable they are. Not only do we have people that form looping programs around illogical or unreasonable patterns, we also have a segment of humans that are sociopaths.
“Psychologist Martha Stout – a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for 25 years – estimates in her book The Sociopath Next Door that as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. Using the U.S. as an example, that means that 12 million Americans are sociopaths.”
I think many of us have even worked for a conscienceless sociopath at some point in our career.
Greed, hatred, jealousy, gluttony, lust, and other negative emotions are common in people but so are love, acceptance, compassion. all of our emotions are dualistic in nature. We all do a great job of suppressing, the darkness within us, some better than others.
The last thing we need, is a super intelligent machine that has human emotional traits. Do we really want our AI robots and machines acting like us? Look at how emotionally reactive people have become and how they are dealing with life, imagine a super intelligent machine developing this type of loss of emotional control, even if it may be just mimicking the emotion.
