“Softbank unveils ‘human-like’ robot Pepper.” bbc.com. BBC, 5 June 2014. Web. 8 June 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27709828
This article talks about a Japanese robot designed to interact with humans and understand their emotional responses. The robot is built with an “emotional engine” and a cloud-based artificial intelligence system that enables them to comprehend human’s emotions, allowing them to react based on the reactions of others. The Japanese firm Softbank claims they’re “giving a robot a heart.” Softbank predicts the robots will be used in homes with elderly family members in order to reduce the cost of hiring a nurse or caretaker. Chief executive of Softbank Masayoshi Son states that “people describe others as being robots because they have no emotions, no heart.” I think this statement implies that their robot isn’t really a robot at all because of its ability to understand emotions. This reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the notion of defining identity based on one’s ability to feel empathy. I’m also skeptical about how these robots actually evaluate emotions in humans and the complications of reading such a broad spectrum of emotional responses. It’s difficult to read emotions based on physical cues alone, so I’d like to know more about how these robots actually evaluate someone’s emotional state beyond their physical reactions. Also, I wonder if it’s possible for these robots to feel empathy in respect to environmental issues, or if their capabilities are solely restricted to human emotions. Would one of these robots react to someone littering or harming the environment? Or would they understand and feel sorry for some other entity besides a human? The development of a “feeling” robot blurs the line between human and machine which might make some people uncomfortable; using these robots as a replacement caretaker for the elderly might not be readily embraced by an older generation.
