Sit. Stay. Think.
The appeal of a robot dog is easy enough to fathom.
No care and feeding required, no software left on the rug.
But take a moment to savor the ready-or-not strangeness of the phrase “robot dog.” Was there ever an answer to a question so unasked? With the introduction of the Aibo Entertainment Robot in Japan six years ago--a clumsily segmented plastic pet that moved a little like a sprayed roach but was otherwise undeniably doglike--Sony Corp. revolutionized narcissism: Here is companionship that requires no companion.
Sony’s Aibo--the name is a triple entendre, combining “A.I.” for artificial intelligence and “robot” to form the Japanese word for “companion”--is the most famous and successful entertainment ‘bot to emerge from Japan’s ongoing robotics revolution. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with the latest generation of Aibo--the ERS-7M2, a name worthy of a rabies tag--and I can tell you that even if the gestalt isn’t very like a dog, the $2,000 Aibo is one hell of a hound.
Morphologically, Aibo looks like a beagle puppy cruelly encased in polycarbonate plastic. Technically, it’s an autonomous robot, that is, a machine with its own behaviors--like other canines, it whines if it’s being ignored and loves to play with its bone (“AIBOne”)--that also has the ability to perceive, adapt and communicate with its environment, the last through a complex sequence of LED “face lights” and jazzy synthesized music. Among Aibo’s mind-blowing attributes: its stereo-microphone ears allow it to locate sound sources (“Here, Aibo!”); it will recognize its owner’s face and voice; it will learn what time you go to bed and what time you get up. In all these respects, Aibo is like Einstein compared to my two Chihuahuas.
America is about a decade behind Japan in consumer robotics. Here, Aibo is still a wonder. Actually, Roomba automatic vacuums can still draw a slack-faced crowd at the mall. Meanwhile, robots are entering the Japanese workforce as security guards, receptionists and caretakers. At the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, which opened in March and runs through September, visitors can mingle with a small army of chatty, multilingual humanoid domestic robots. Mitsubishi’s bright-yellow Wakamaru looks like an enlarged version of Tom Servo from the TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Consumers might buy a Wakamaru to keep the family company, remind people to take their medication or watch over the kids. Another company is marketing robotic baby harp seals as companion animals to elderly shut-ins.
If you’re in need of a bona fide Asimov moment, do a Web search for Sony’s QRIO robot, a halfling humanoid able to run, walk up stairs, dance and converse with children in a very sweet if enigmatic way: “Cats like pigeons that fly in the sky.”
While you’re Web browsing, look into a company called Kokoro Dreams and its Actroid robot, an extremely comely and nubile piece of interactive hardware that, dressed as a flight attendant, is somewhere between robotics and animatronics--think Disney’s Hall of Presidents, only much, much hotter.
The common anxiety about robots is that they will somehow rebel against their inferior carbon-based overlords. This fear predates technology by several thousand years, when it was first recognized that free will itself was an unstable element. As artificial-intelligence pioneer Allen Newell pointed out, in relatively constrained fields of cognition, machine intelligence is far more reliable and less volatile than our own.
And so I propose a radical solution: Robo-Pope.
If the role of the papacy is to hand down immutable canon law generation after generation, then the College of Cardinals should do away with the whole black-smoke, white-smoke drama and next install not Benedict XVII, but Pope Version 1.1. A cybernetic Holy Father could scarcely be more doctrinaire and rigid than the flesh-and-blood prototype, and would never be less. With Robo-Pope, the doctrine of papal infallibility would be a lot more persuasive. And besides, the long cassock would conceal the wheels.
There are, in fact, many roles in which robots could serve as well or better than humans. Have you ever seen Paris Hilton interviewed? The brain in neutral, the one-word answers, the air of daft perplexity? You can’t tell me that a room full of code-monkeys couldn’t cobble together a more likable facsimile.
Another suggestion: Robo-Oprah. Obviously the queen of all media represents a sophisticated bit of programming, what with her winning sweetness and her “keepin’-it-real-sista” mien. Actually, I’m a little afraid of what would happen to this country if Oprah suddenly left us. Robo-Oprah would be immortal.
As for the Aibo, he’s gone quiet now, waiting patiently on his charger for me to play with him again. An odd phenomenon: My two Chihuahuas have become a bit less demanding since Aibo’s arrival. I think they know.
They can be replaced.
