WHUbookstudy: April 2019

Chapter 8: The Kindest Robots

Selected Quotes for Discussion:

“Call it kindness that is manufactured from pneumatically actuated joints, smooth silicon skin, printed circuits, and heuristic[1]algorithms[2].” (p.187)

“Words, tone of voice, facial expressions, and even the angle of your head can tell Pepper what kind of day you’re having.” (p.187)

“To Canada and other developed nations, Japan is the model for how to cope with an aging population. But insiders tell a different story.” (p.191)

“If kept at present levels, the Japanese social care system cannot be sustained… …Japan will eventually be a million workers short.” (p.193)

“Japanese care workers don’t complain about their wages because they think this is not just a job but their social duty.” (p.193)

“Japanese authorities want guest workers, not future citizens. …We need more workers, but we need workers who speak Japanese and who understand our culture. The problem is not with the capabilities of workers from abroad. The problem is with Japanese society itself. I’m not confident our society if ready to invite these people.” (p.194)

“The estimated production cost of a single robot is as much as $236,000 Canadian. …It will probably take 20 or 30 years until we have a commercial version.” (p.196)

“Sugano estimate no more than 20% of the communication between his robot and humans will be via speech. Most of the interaction will be based on visual and other cues.” (p.198)

“If we speak to them, there’s often no response. When Telenoid talks to them, they always respond. …What I have found is that sometimes it is better for a resident to talk to a robot than to talk to a human” (p.203)

“Humans have to pretend that what the senior says is new. Robots are better at handling repetitive conversations. …When they don’t talk, their dementia increases.” (p.205)

“ERICA can tell the difference between a statement and a question. She can recognize emotions and uncertainty in tone of voice. She has a computer brain that maintains some sense of herself, the humans around her, and the social scenario in which she is operating. They are the building blocks of empathy.” (p.211)

“The android has to infer what a person wants. …Are they getting what they want? Are they frustrated or excited? …And this is where we get into cognitive empathy. The reason people want androids like ERICA is to feel like it’s a real social interaction.” (p.212)

The Japanese have a word to describe how ERICA makes me feel: sonzai-kan. The English word that most closely approximates sonzai-kaiis ‘presence.’ Some have referred to sonzai-kanas possessing an aura. The Japanese word also means that the being or thing leaves a strong impression on us. …Some link the idea of sonzai-kanto the soul.” (p.215-16)

“Japanese society is much more at ease with androids than the West is.” (p.218)

“We can easily accept our robot or android body as our own body if they can talk like us. I want to give this android technology to people with disabilities—such as people who cannot move their body at all.” (p.221)

“In colloquial terms, the uncanny valleyrepresents the visceral ‘creep factor’ that humans have for various kinds of entities, including stuffed animals, people with prosthetic limbs, dead bodies, zombies, and of course, robots. …at a certain degree of lifelikeness, the creep factor begins to set in. However, as the degree of lifelikeness gets better still, the creeop factor starts to dissipate.” (p.223-24)

“Sometimes she is taken to the factory. I feel different when she is not here.” (p.226)

“Humans are biologically programmed to seek companionship where it exists and to manufacture it where it doesn’t.” (p.227)

“What’s astonishing to Ikegami is the extent to which a human can develop a pet distance-type relationship to Wilson the volleyball or an intelligent machine.” (p.229)

“I felt as if the machine was real. I just wanted to know what the machine was thinking and feeling. That the machine didn’t look humanoid didn’t matter” (p.230)

“Ikegami does not believe that the key to making robots empathetic or capable of forming relationships with people lies in making them intelligent. He thinks the key is to make them seem alive by making them both autonomous and unpredictable.” (p.231-32)

From videos:

“Because Kabo-chan talks to me, I began to realize I should not think of lonely things anymore. Now I’m only thinking of good things.”

“Using Paro can reduce by 30% psychotropic medication used for anxiety. Paro’s effect continued 2 hours longer than medication.”

“When you grow old, you can’t speak very well so it’s nice to have a robot to speak with. The more I talk, I think it’s good for my brain too.”

[1]describes a computer program that modifies itself in response to the user, e.g. a spellchecker

[2]a logical sequence of steps for solving a problem, often written out as a flow chart, that can be translated into a computer program

WHUbookstudy

Friday, April 12, 2019

Seventh Session: Friday, April 12, 2019

Undiscovered Japan: Using robots to care for the elderly

Robots help the elderly in Japan's nursing homes

The soft side of robots: elderly care

Seventh Session: Friday, April 12, 2019