Hello Robot
They are now among us! Although we are not yet fully aware of them, they are among us and will be ever more numerous. Maybe they will colonize us. Whether we like it or not, in any case, we will be forced to coexist with them, collaborate, perhaps even confront each other. Hoping we don't have to succumb...
No, I'm not referring to some alien species, nor to a dangerous race of visitors who came from who knows where. While it is indeed an alien form, it is not from outer space. But she was born here, on earth. And it is alien in that it is different from us and from everything else our planet has seen so far. And we, humanity, are its creators. In short, I mean to talk about robots and electronic devices equipped with artificial intelligence in general.
We are increasingly surrounded by a multifaceted jumble of more or less intelligent and more or less useful devices and we are now largely addicted to them. We are gradually encouraged and educated to accept the pervasiveness, ubiquity or invasiveness of technology and in some cases we even become dependent on it. But are we really ready to face the near digital future and above all are we really aware of what presumably awaits us?
The metamorphosis of interaction
What seems certain is that we will have to interact to an ever greater extent with these devices. Nonetheless the methods and sometimes even the very direction of man-machine communication have profoundly changed over time. Since the beginning of information technology, this interaction has progressively evolved. Today, indeed, it appears suddenly and intrinsically changed.
It is the dizzying acceleration that digital advancement has imprinted on transformation in recent years. This transformation could not fail to affect the ways in which we interact and ultimately relate to electronic devices in general. At the beginning there were eminently mechanical computers, which required abstruse commands, however elementary, by means of punched cards and then textual input. Then we moved on to keyboards and then to mice, a real revolution in terms of ease of use and accessibility.
Today, thanks to the advances in artificial intelligence, a further leap has been taken. There is no longer any need for any intermediary in the interaction between man and machine. You no longer need mice, keyboards, CD-ROMs or memories of any kind. These "agents" are no longer indispensable. Today communication, exchange and acquisition of information can take place in various ways. This is due to the multiple types of sensors and the recent achievements of AI.
Starting with the most banal medium for us humans: natural language. What until recently was a dream or at most a wish, thanks to the acquisitions in the field of speech recognition and language understanding has finally become a reality. We are still in an initial and perfectible stage. We can now communicate with digital devices, we are able to issue vocal orders. However, we can also, in turn, be questioned or investigated.
The learning machine
Furthermore, by virtue of further advances (due mainly to machine learning), from image recognition to the ability of AI to learn autonomously, these devices can process enormous amounts of information. They can relate as well as extract meaning, patterns and regularities from disparate data. Among the latter, there are also human beings.
In interaction with man, by now, all of this makes these devices capable of anticipating our request, predicting a need, going so far as to suggest and recommend. At the moment! Indeed, the director of communication no longer appears firmly in the hands of man. Artificial intelligence, its boundless capacity (for calculation, analysis and forecasting), combined with growing autonomy, are suddenly and inexorably gaining ground. And we're just getting started…
Automation, of robots and software, is moving towards goals that were unthinkable until recently. The replacement and consequent marginalization of the human component is advancing quickly. From the appropriation of simple and routine tasks we have moved on to the hoarding, by machines, of more complex and intellectual tasks, although still ordinary.
Now AI is aiming decisively at the conquest of higher prerogatives, once considered exclusively human. Everything then is happening at an unusual speed. The same robots are no longer mere machines assigned to perform specific tasks, nor even extravagant playthings for nerds. On the contrary, they have evolved and diversified, so much so that they are now able, as mentioned, to interact more or less completely with man.
Artificial emotional intelligence
In this regard, there is talk of social robots (social robots) and lately, to underline a further qualitative leap, almost of species, of emotional robots. Artificial intelligence is now evolving towards artificial emotional intelligence. Although automatons do not feel emotions, they simulate them, solicit them, induce them, make use of them…
If anyone still believes that these are scenarios that can be confined to science fiction or in any case much to come, they are wrong. Should the skeptics want to measure how far the research has gone, well, they can ponder the fact that, shortly thereafter, we could find a robot welcoming us to a job interview… Futuristic? farfetched? Hoax? Not at all, all true.
So let's talk about AI, but also about interaction, communication, evaluation, as well as dialogue, involvement, emotions. Artificial, of course, yet on a level very close to the exquisitely human one.
Let's talk about Tengai.
I held
The idea is neither new nor particularly original, nevertheless it was believed by a Swedish company that deals with artificial intelligence and social robots: Furhat Robotics. Born as a start-up at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, after four years of work the company has developed a robotic platform capable of simulating "human-like facial expressions and emotions". The aim, says Gabriel Skantze, the company's chief scientist, is to make the automaton "much less disturbing or strange than a more traditional robot".
His name is Tengai and he is a small robot measuring just 41 cm and weighing 3,5 kg. At a casual glance it might appear not too different from other humanoid social robots, for example the widely spread ones of the Pepper line (a social robot originally produced by Aldebaran Robotics, which later became Softbank Robotics).
Tengai actually has little else besides a human-like face, as it is designed to be placed directly on the desk and look your interlocutor straight in the eye. Yes, you read right, an interlocutor, because Tengai's job is to converse with the person in front of him. The robot therefore tilts its head slightly, nods, his face lights up, plus he smiles and blinks. He tries to evoke empathy in the people he interacts with, e.g. with "mhm". He aims to make interaction with androids as natural as possible and ultimately engaging. “At Furhat, we believe that social robots are the most natural, accessible and engaging user interface for humans,” emphasizes Samer Al Moubayed, CEO of Furhat Robotics.
The "femininity" of Tengai
For this purpose, the robot is also equipped with a touch of femininity. Like his other illustrious "colleagues" Tengai also has a female voice. In fact, the female stamp is by far the most used in the various electronic devices we interact with every day. And it is not a case.
A woman's voice typically feels more welcoming, warm, and reassuring. She is even more attractive to the fairer sex. "It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone agrees — It's a well-known phenomenon that the human brain is structured to appreciate female voices," said Clifford Nass .
Could it be biology, a reference to the maternal sense that evokes care and affection, or the persistence of a stereotype that associates women with assistance and support work (from switchboard operators to Bitching Betty, from secretaries to nurses)? In any case, the female voice generally communicates greater warmth, reliability and competence. A masculine timbre is indeed perceived as aggressive, authoritarian, threatening. At least from Hollywood and the media industry in general, just think of Hal9000 or WarGames' crazed computer. On the other hand, when you want her to be more compliant or condescending, particularly when she becomes incorporeal and ethereal, the voice almost always becomes female: above all her Samantha. And so our digital devices speak mostly in females, from the most varied GPS systems to Siri, from Cortana to Alexa, and so on. Returning to Tengai, without sparing emphasis, Furhat Robotics offers multiple uses for its creature, each of which is accompanied by a relative film: ranging from the formation of
employees, to the enrichment of the customer experience, to the job interview. Precisely in relation to this last use, the selection of personnel, Furhat has started a relationship with a large company in the recruitment sector: TNG.
We will deal with Tengai's role in the THG in the next article.
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The author
Giuseppe di Pirro is the author of this intervention: he lives in Gaeta, studies and graduates in medieval history at the University of Florence. He is divided between various passions: history, economics and sociology. He currently collaborates with the blog “ebookextra”, where he covers media and journalism trends at the time of the move towards artificial intelligence. He contributed to the book by Fabio Menghini, Le FANGs: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google. The large groups of the new economy in the age of economic stagnation, goWare 2018.
