Robots and artificial intelligence systems have long ceased to be the entourage of science fiction films.
Now they work in factories, answer our calls to banks, turn on and off street lights, drive cars, operate on patients, write news and play people in all the known intellectual games. We encounter robots every day, but we do not notice them. They remain in the shadows - loyal, but faceless servants. Nevertheless, robots are already forcing us to change our behavior, habits, and manner of communication. According to many scientists, in the next 10-15 years robots will turn into full-fledged partners of humans.
A small, childlike robot has a long conversation with you. He looks with his eyes-cameras, recognizes facial expressions and speech. Asks: "What do you like more - pizza or pasta?" He happily comments on the answers, is interested in business. You are more and more imbued with sympathy for him. He is so cute! But then the leader of the experiment enters the room and says that you can turn off the robot if you want. How to proceed? Suddenly, the robot begs not to turn it off. He pitifully says that he is very afraid of the dark. He asks: "Well, don't, please, don't turn it off, I don't want to, no!"
… And yet almost 70% of people press a button, turning it into a piece of iron. True, not immediately. One takes two tries, others five. 30 percent of the subjects show empathy for the robot, sympathize with its requests and "keep it alive." This only happens if the robot mimics human emotions. In the second experimental group, the robot behaved functionally: it gave information, answered questions in monosyllables, and did not beg for mercy. Only one person did not turn it off.
This experiment by sociologists from the University of Duisburg-Essen highlights the frontier that modern robotics has approached. If earlier the robot was only "a programmable working mechanism with a certain degree of autonomy, capable of moving within a certain environment and performing tasks assigned by a person", now it increasingly takes on purely human roles - friend, lover and enemy. And this raises many questions: should a robot have rights, can people beat and kill robots, will sex with robots become more attractive than with living people?
Aggression towards robots
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Robots are very similar to humans, but still not humans. Therefore, they can be treated in a way that no one will allow in relation to a person or even animals. In recent years, there has been a widespread surge in violence against robots. Scientists believe that this is a global phenomenon, independent of culture or location.
Long history of mutual violence
However, the robots started it first. On January 25, 1979, at the Ford Michigan plant, a one-ton sorter robot knocked down worker Robert Williams to death. This is the first time a human has been killed by a robot.
In July 1981, on the premises of Kawasaki Heavy Industries Corporation in Japan, fitter Kenji Urada tried to fix an industrial robot arm. Accidentally hit the start switch - and a mechanical hand crushed his head.
In 2007, the Oerlikon GDF-005 automatic computerized anti-aircraft gun suddenly opened fire on the surrounding South African soldiers. Nine people were killed and 14 injured. The causes of the tragedy were not disclosed.
In mid-July 2015, in Philadelphia, people fought back when hooligans decapitated the hitchBOT hitchhiker. He has already traveled to Canada, Germany and Holland. But the USA became the last country in the life of hitchBOT.
A year later, on May 7, 2016, the Tesla Model S autopilot did not notice the light truck against the bright sky, and Joshua Brown became the first person to die in a car accident involving an unmanned vehicle.
In the spring of 2017, a Silicon Valley engineer attacked a Knightscope K-5 security robot patrolling a parking lot, hitting and knocking it to the ground. And in August of the same year, a drunken Estonian attacked the robot courier Robovan of the Omniva postal company in Tallinn. The man kicked the robot and tried to turn it over. However, the postman robot turned on the security system and transmitted an alarm to the creator Starship Technologies. The aggressor was detained by the police.
The inhabitants of Russia are also not lagging behind. On September 17, 2017, the famous Russian robot Alantim was beaten with a baseball bat on a street in Moscow. Alantim checked the quality of the road surface and the clarity of the markings. At that moment, a group of unidentified persons drove up to him in a car and attacked the robot. After the incident, Alantim had to undergo a major overhaul.
Cognitive neuroscientist Agnieszka Wykowska from the Italian Institute of Technology believes that human aggression towards robots has different motivations, but it is always based on an attitude towards strangers, a kind of xenophobia, only not towards representatives of a different race or tribe, but towards creatures of a completely different origin …
This means that automata are changing our morality. Permissiveness and cruelty towards robots provokes an increase in violence against people, as it shifts the social framework of acceptable behavior. Scientists do not want to put up with this and offer solutions to the problem. So, you can reduce aggression towards a robot through empathy, and for this it does not even need to beg you for mercy. It is enough just to look at the world from its "skin".
The person being tested puts on virtual reality glasses and, in the fictional world, approaches the mirror, where he sees not himself, but, for example, a postman droid. Such an unusual experience allows a person to feel sympathy for the machine, endow it with its inherent features and develop a tolerance for its presence and the way it operates.
However, this also has a downside. Another group of scientists has shown that increasing empathy for robots reduces empathy for other people. The development of personal robotics can lead to the withering away of such human abilities as emotional and social intelligence. If we can get sex from a robot, then why should we learn the art of flirting with living women?
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Most technological innovations make the different abilities of people unnecessary. If earlier, in order to work as a taxi driver, a driver had to know the city, road junctions and, say, the bridge opening schedule, now he only needs a smartphone with maps and GPS. A number of psychological studies show that this affects many mental functions: the ability of drivers to solve logical problems, navigate the terrain, memory and creative thinking deteriorate.
Mechanical lovers
In the countries of the "golden billion", traditional heterosexual intimate relationships between men and women are becoming more and more difficult. New social norms do not make them popular. An attempt to speak to a woman with headphones today can be regarded as harassment. Therefore, the higher the risk of contact with women, the more likely it is that men will switch their attention to less risky substitutes like fembots or heterosexual sexbots.
Some statistics. Nearly 25% of men and 9% of women in the US are ready to have sex with robots. In Japan, their number is even greater - 48% of the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun will prefer a robot rather than a living person as a sexual partner. Every year in Denmark alone, 400 men buy customized robo dolls for sex. According to them, this choice is prompted by loneliness, psychological and material difficulties in relations with women or social emptiness.
Evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleishman believes that sex robots will become commonplace in just 10 to 15 years. Most of them will have a feminine appearance, as men are the key audience for this market. Sex bots will fall in value, but will gain stunning realism, as the men who prefer them are focused not so much on sexual sensations as on satisfying kinesthetic needs and replacing emotions. They will make it possible to fulfill the requests that a living person cannot realize. European governments are looking at such products as a means of preventing sexual crimes.
An increase in the number of sexbot gynoids will trigger the main rule of evolutionary psychology: representatives of the quantitatively dominant sex compete for the representatives of the deficient sex. Sex robots will create a situation where there are more conventional women. This can create conditions for intense competition for male attention and lead to a new revision of social rules and norms.
But it is quite possible that women will be fine without men. Manufacturers of robots and individual assistants with artificial intelligence do not sleep here either. Now all kinds of devices for stimulating erogenous zones are being actively developed. They are almost guaranteed to cause an orgasm even in women who have never experienced it before. Interestingly, insurance companies will soon be covering the purchase of these prescription devices.
Well, in terms of emotions, applications with dating simulation will help women. For example, today the Chinese application Love and Producer has gathered a multi-million audience in the Middle Kingdom. With its help, a woman “meets” four virtual men and develops relationships in an atmosphere of mysticism with fantasy elements. The bot man is safe, compliments and is always ready to give his full attention to the woman.
However, the development of sexbot technology may be hampered by one phenomenon related to the psychology of perception.
Valley of Horrors
In 1919, Sigmund Freud published an article "The Terrible". In it, from the standpoint of psychoanalysis, he substantiated that the greatest fear people experience is not before something unknown. We are terrified by something that is familiar to us, but for some reason looks strange or demonstrates that it only imitates something familiar to us, but in fact is something different.
51 years later, Japanese professor of robotics Masahiro Mori published an article in Energy magazine, where he hypothesized the existence of the "Evil Valley". Mori plotted a variety of objects, from the least human-like industrial robots to mannequins and special Japanese dolls - bunraku.
From the point of view of Professor Mori, there is a connection between the similarity of an object to a living person and the emotional reaction of people to it. Usually people react positively to a humanoid robot like the Russian Alantim. But on an android, which imitates a person as accurately as possible, but in some trifles reveals that he is just a machine, the reaction will be fear and horror. As if we saw the rising dead.
It is worth noting that the "Evil Valley" hypothesis has not yet been refuted or finally confirmed. Disputes and experiments continue to this day.
AGAFON SELITRENNIKOV