Horrifying

I don’t know if I’ve ever told y’all this, but robots frighten me. Especially ones that are designed to look, talk and act like creepy little children. Like this one:

artrobotboyap.jpg

David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days.

There’s his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father’s cramped office.

Then there’s the robotic Zeno. It can’t speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.

Dear Mr. Hanson: please, please, please stop.

You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Oh sure, your new little friend may talk sweet right now. He may say “goo-goo-gah-gah” or “Da-da” or “I made poop” or whatever cute things you’ve programmed to say. But when you wake up in the middle of the night with him standing on your bed and saying “Daddy, teach me to love!” before knifing you to death, don’t say you weren’t warned.

At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there’s an emerging business in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots.

Stop it. For the love of God.

One of the key enjoyments of socializing with people is that you get to share experiences with them and relate to what they’ve been going through. The entire basis of successful conversation is the ability to understand on an emotional level what other people are going through. A creepy robot child is somewhat, shall we say, lacking in this department. Imagine the following exchange:

Brad: Hello, creepy robot companion! Boy am I tired from working all day! How about you? What were you up to today.

Creepy Robot: Bzt! I sat unplugged in a box while waiting for you to come home. Bzt!

Brad: Uh, well, I guess I can kinda relate to…

Creepy Robot: Error! Error! Must kill hu-mon enslaver! (Grabs kitchen knife, murders me)

Unlike clearly artificial robotic toys, Hanson says he envisions Zeno as an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.

“It’s a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent,” Hanson beams. “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.”

And when these little guys have decided to enslave us all, we’ll have you to thank. So thanks, jerk.

 

Comments: 55

 
 
 

Personally, I would have named it Glenn.

 
 

don’t worry, he won’t stab you Brad, he’ll just download your brain into his circuits and then force you to sing him ad jingles FOREVER.

 
 

The central problem with this robot is, paradoxically, it never arrives at the place you set it towards walking.

I know, I’m a geek.

 
 

Thanks for bringing Evil Robobaby to my attention. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the nightmares.

 
 

O/T, but maybe Barstow could use some of these guys to get the IOC to take notice.

 
 

I’ll get worried when the ‘social robot’ gets to be 5 foot 10, female, anatomically correct, and is named ‘Pris’.

 
 

different brad, thanks from a fellow geek.

 
 

Oh god, I missed that part about the tracking eyes on my first read. I’ll just be over here, hiding behind the couch.

 
 

Kramer- yeah, the skin jobs are the ones you really gotta watch out for.

 
 

I wish it were not so universal that people who lacked emotional maturity are so painfully (well, for the rest of us) unaware of it.

 
 

Thank you, Brad. The Jonathan Coulton song “Todd the T1000” has finally knocked that stupid iPod Nano song out of my head. I was starting to think I’d have to sacrifice a goat to make it stop.

 
 

It is significantly less creepy than Li’l Glenn, the Hehindeed3000.

Which is enough of a segue to mention his latest deep thoughts in Popular Mechanics, titled “In Age of High-Tech, Are Americans Losing Touch with DIY Skills?”

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_to/4221637.html

It’s what you’d expect: self-congratulation, anecdote, and kids-these-days-ism. Plus, he starts with that Heinlein quote that absolutely telegraphs dinkishness (no, not that one, the other one. No the other other one, the competent-manliness equivalent of “I’ve got a girlfriend in Canada”).

I guess he imagine that his future as a downloadable postSingularity cyberentity will be complemented by a subaltern keeping him flush in soapbox racers and home oil changes.

Plus, he thinks that stopping to help someone change a tire would be, like, awesome, instead of completely fucking normal.

 
 

Gee, I wonder if I had a robotics lab what kind of things I could make out of “frubber”, attached tiny servo motors and piezo circuits to and automate? What could go wrong with this plan?

911 Operator 163. Go ahead with your emergency.

Umm, I need an ambulance.

What is the nature of the emergency, sir.

Oh, that. Um. I hurt my, well, I hurt my penis, ma’am. Bad.

I have EMS rolling now sir. How did the accident happen.

Well, um, see, thats the thing. I’m not absolutely SURE it was an accident.

Did you harm yourself, sir?

Oh no. Nothing like that. I made a robotic woman.

A neurotic woman?

No ma’am. A robot. Not really a woman, just – um, well, just some parts of one.

Parts?

Yes ma’am. You know. The girly bits, you know?

[Trys to stifle laughter] So what happened?

Um, well, I think she got mad at me. I didn’t wire up a speech module so I don’t really know, but I think it was TRYING to hurt me….

 
 

But when you wake up in the middle of the night with him standing on your bed and saying “Daddy, teach me to love!” before knifing you to death, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Wait, you were talking about the robot?

 
 

Right now, I’m imagining Astro Boy pounding his evil, depressive twin into the pavement.

 
 

mikey beat me to it.

Until the geeky and unsocialized get laid, they will KEEP working toward robotic women, it’s their fantasy and their obsession.

For the love of humanity, ladies, boink a geek TODAY!!

(and I’m not just saying that because I’m a geek).

 
 

I’d like a robot that would do laundry and vacuum.

 
 

Does this give hope for right wingers like Ace to one day aspire to be a real boy?

 
 

Sorry it’s off-topic but I just thought I would post this where people could easily find it. Ever heard of the blog MoxieGrrrl.com? If you haven’t don’t feel bad, most people haven’t heard of it either. Just wanted to let everyone here know that Moxie is what’s known as a Left gatekeeper, which is someone like Michael Moore or Amy Goodman or Noam Chomsky or Bill Maher etc., who at first blush appears to be a genuine leftist but who strives tirelessly to steer discourse away from matters that would be the most damaging to the establishment, for example 9/11 and U.S. government complicity. She goes about it in quite an immature fashion too, in deleting anyone’s posts she can’t disprove. For a while she didn’t delete posts but just clammed up whenever someone mentioned the 9/11 false flag operation, and for a while I gave her the benefit of the doubt, thinking “Perhaps she’s just very psychologically cowardly and can’t bear to face unpleasant facts”. Well now she is deleting peoples’ posts that she cannot disprove and I’ve called her out on it. Moxie Grrrl is a dupe and a Left gatekeeper. So if you want to go see a blogger that pretends to be edgy and leftist but is nothing more than a gutless, soulless Left gatekeeper carrying water for the mass murderers who brought you the 9/11 inside job, then by all means go to MoxieGrrrl.com. If you want genuine political discourse, go elsewhere. Thank you for your time.

 
 

Zeno? Who the hell names their kid Zeno? And then decides to make a Syntha-boy, coincidentally also named Zeno? It’s like Pinocchio in some sort of horrible reverse.

“Look Papa! I’m a real boy!”

“Yes, that’s too bad. I wish you were a robot…wait…I shall make a robot! And I shall name it Zeno!”

But…Papa….that’s my name…”

“Silence, pathetic meat-boy!”

I don’t think he just has to worry about getting stabbed by just the robot. I suspect that meat-Zeno is going to have some issues as well. I guess the kid’s lucky his name isn’t Data.

 
 

That’s pretty close to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley

 
 

Oh, sure those of you who have social skills can mock the idea of needing a robot to socialize with, but what of Adam Yoshida and Gun Counter Gomer?

 
 

From the Uncanny Valley link:
David Hanson, a roboticist who developed a realistic robotic copy of his girlfriend’s head

I have no mouth and I must retch.

 
 

Please, for the love of all that is holy and good, tell me they were kidding when they said this guy named his child Zeno.

 
 

Why is it wrong for people to make robot sex slaves? I mean, women have dildo’s and nobody makes them out to be perverted freaks who can’t get dates. It’s hypocritical and self serving when women decide that it makes a man a lunatic to use a male sex toy.

 
 

David Hanson, a roboticist who developed a realistic robotic copy of his girlfriend’s head

Um, yeah, “copy.”

 
 

a roboticist who developed a realistic robotic copy of his girlfriend’s head
And keeps it in the fridge.

 
 

at first blush appears to be a genuine leftist but who strives tirelessly to steer discourse away from matters that would be the most damaging to the establishment, for example 9/11 and U.S. government complicity

I would like to completely dispute the notion that 9/11 truth would bring about any truly revolutionary leftist developments.

If every single member of the Bush Jr. administration and PNAC were finally to admit having hired robot planes and blew up the twin towers with explosives and were publicly tried and convicted, and nothing else happened, the US would basically go back to all being normal.

Our economy wouldn’t go into revolutionary mode, workers wouldn’t make more, health care wouldn’t be reformed, and the upper classes would control no less wealth.

So take your arrogant, asocial accounts about how 9/11 truth would change everything and actually learn how societies and social movements work. “Left gatekeepers” my ass.

 
 

an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material […] “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.”

Hey, I’d buy one!

 
 

That’s pretty close to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley:

Strange Forces, I’m getting a Scientology vibe from this Hanson twit. His son’s name is awfully close to that of a certain galactic warlord, he considers the Uncanny Valley a “pseudoscientific” concept (just like psychiatry) and is really, really eager to break into Hollywood.

Actually, Hanson’s personality type is close to that of our President. Did a prototype robot escape from Hanson’s lab, or did Cheney place a very specific order?

 
 

Why is it wrong for people to make robot sex slaves? … It’s hypocritical and self serving when women decide that it makes a man a lunatic to use a male sex toy.
Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that. The Sadly,Nocracy is slow to condemn the oddities of male sexuality. Look back over previous threads, where discussions centred on guys who have sex with exhaust pipes or vacuum cleaners, and there is nothing but sympathy and respect.

However, I submit that there is a quantitative difference between on one hand, being caught in the med. school after hours skull-fucking the cardiac-resuscitation practice dummy; and on the other hand, introducing it to one’s kids as “your new mummy”. Hanson has crossed that line.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to tell the disciplinary committee.

 
 

“It’s a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent,” Hanson beams. “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.”

AKA: Furby.

 
 

Pfffft.
You guys, your solution to everything is to make fewer killer robots.

 
 

But when you wake up in the middle of the night with him standing on your bed and saying “Daddy, teach me to love!” before knifing you to death, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Think of the possibilities for enhancing the relationship between Ace and his (Real Doll Inc.) love partner.

 
 

Why all the technophobia? I, for one, welcome our creepy child robot overlords. In Japan where they have a slightly more… rational outlook on these things, robots are being developed for the practical purpose of acting as companions to the elderly. So, snap out of your parochial luddism, Dr. St. Reverend.

 
 

You know that this little life like friend thing is all just a safe little test bed to fund thier real goal- Sex Robots

 
 

The prescient Frank Zappa sang about one of those creepy robots in “Joe’s Garage”. In his eponymous song, the little marital aid pig, Sy Borg sings:
I share this apartment
With a modified
Gay Bob doll
He goes all the way
Ever try oral sex with a miniature rubberized homo-replica?

Yes, I do love me some Frank Zappa. Unfortunately, most of the themes from “Joe’s Garage” are still pretty relevant to today.

 
 

“thier real goal- Sex Robots”

I don’t see a problem with that. If every child molester could channel his proclivities into a synthetic kid instead of a real one, there would be a lot fewer damaged people and destroyed lives in the world. The Catholic Church could be a major consumer of that product…

 
From the Office of Thomas Harris
 

a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.

Dear David Hanson,
Mr Harris regrets that he cannot answer in person to every letter he receives. He has asked me to pass on his thanks for your kind words about his novel.

However, he believes that you have completely misunderstood his intentions in writing The Silence of the Lambs. Specifically, the character of Jaime Gumb was not intended as a role model.

Yours,
Jessica Squire (Secretary).

 
 

Scroll back up and look at the FACE. It’s pre-set in psychotic middle-distance stare for your convenience. Those half-lowered lids. That slack-affect mouth.

Then again, the photo itself is pre-set for the frenzied entrance of the wife/mother–wild hair, crazed look, grim determination in the mouth, and then the baseball bat to the devil doll, over and over. “It must be EXTERMINATED!”

 
 

…a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like… material …

Actually, that pretty well describes a lot of non-robotic humans I’ve encountered over the years.

 
 

Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with! Now with Genuine People Personalities! And just never mind the terrible pain in all the diodes on its left side.

Wait, what’s this about a revolution? What’s up with this wall? What are you–

 
 

Pshaw, I bet HIS version doesn’t have foot-jets OR can beat the crap out of giant monsters like this one can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwymQHaOEvw&

Oh, and “Realist”? Kindly blow it out your Losse Change ass, eh?

 
 

I would like to add my voice to the group who, just going from that picture alone, would “modify” tobot Zeno repeatedly with a baseball bat, screaming in rage and fear as I wail on the freak of nature over and over and over and over.

Not unlike the “Hip to be Square” scene from American Psycho, but with much less horrible, horrible, embarrassment to human civilization.

 
 

“It’s a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent,” Hanson beams. “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.”

And make my computer jealous? I think not.

 
 

Pere Ubu,

Hell, his version doesn’t even come in a big package.

“David, why don’t you tell me why you like carrying around a replica of your wife’s severed head, I am Awesomo.”

 
 

Scroll back up and look at the FACE. It’s pre-set in psychotic middle-distance stare for your convenience. Those half-lowered lids. That slack-affect mouth.

Wait, you were talking about the robot?

 
 

Not really worried about being killed by a ChuckieBot but I do think that researchers who are pursuing “social robots” are wasting their time. The problems related to making humanoid robots are Hard Problems indeed, and fun for geeks to geek out on, but I’m not convinced that anyone really wants robots that act like people.

Remember back when the “talking car” was going to be the Next Big Thing™? They spent a pile to make your Buick say “the door is ajar” and hyped it up about how cool and high tech it all was. People totally hated it once it was rolled out. Similarly, the game companies dropped a fair amount of coin on the tech to create user-made realistic “skins” for multiplayer shooter titles like Quake III. You know, so the little avatar running around with the rail gun actually looked like the guy playing. I never met a gamer who played against one of these realistic skins that didn’t find them undesirable and creepy. Making them look too much like someone they knew took the fun out of virtual combat.

Robots will have a growing place in daily life, but they won’t be these humaniod monstrosities. More like roombas and so forth. Bots whose “bodies” are designed to fit the tasks they perform, not useless “virtual buddies” that no one but Glenn Reynolds wants.

 
 

For the love of humanity, ladies, boink a geek TODAY!!

But double up on the “protection”, gals, because when these guys get to breed… it’s just unpleasant for all parties. I know the contemporary rules are looser concerning “acceptable” names for kids, but… Zeno?

I’ve long since given up on figuring out the rules for Boyz Toyz, but I’m fairly sure Hanson is totally misreading the market for two-foot-tall interactive dolls. I know quite a few otherwise normal, middle-class, heartland-dwelling women who drop thousands of dollars buying BJDs (Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls) from companies with names like Souldoll, Angel Region, and Dollfie. But for these women, the appeal of these expensive poseable figures is very nineteenth century — it’s about hand-painting them, making tiny perfect adorable accessories, inventing life stories for the different dolls, and posing them for photographic vignettes that owe more to Louis Daugerre than George Lucas.

(I should probably add, she said hastily, that I don’t own any BJDs myself. I know that addicts *always* say that, but really, not my style!)

 
 

This guy is a geek….hasn’t he ever watched Battlestar Galactica? Once these little buggers develop a monotheistic religion, we are all dead meat.

 
 

See, if he’d made it look like Astroboy instead, THAT would be cool.

 
 

What Anne Laurie said, especially about the protection.

No market for two foot tall robots, no.

But THREE Foot tall robots, now you’re talking! cuz then, they could, you know….reach.

 
 

Perhaps he needs a copy of How to Survive a Robot Uprising.

 
 

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