So the AI can fool a lot of people … in the sense that it can pass for human often enough? 😊

OK, so the robot can react appropriately when it knows enough of the topic

Right, so as a receptionist at a hotel a robot doesn’t need to know everything, we can predict most of the questions that come up

When is breakfast, where is my room, can you order a taxi, etc.

Exactly! So a robot that can move convincingly, speak convincingly, and then look really human  

Smile, nod, move their eyes around, gesticulate, have non-plasticky skin, no gaps, hinges, wires, etc.

That’s a daunting list of do’s and don’ts, and I guess there is a lot more 🧐

Yep. But if we can do that, we can climb out of uncanny valley                             

So how do we do that? 🤔

Well, we did manage to tackle a large part of speech recognition and production …             

… sure, fair enough, Siri and Alexa do work pretty well 😊

And we did that mostly by just studying humans and copying them 😊

Right, to pass the Turing test, imitate a human, fool the judge

Correct. So now we need to do the same thing with the rest, both body and behavior            

That would be a huge deal! 😁

Absolutely. And this is really necessary for empathy.                              

Tell me more!  😁                                                                          

Good! 😄

Tasks, like …? 🤔

Let me start at the beginning! 😊

Humans have toyed with the idea of artificial humans as helpers since forever  

OK  👌🏻

Finally we are really getting there, it’s not a myth or science fiction anymore                                         

Indeed, and we can now build machines that can move almost like an animal or a human 🦾 🐕

Oh, like the robots from Boston Dynamics! I saw them dancing, that was so cool! 😁

Weird, but cool!

“Weird” is the feeling a lot of people have, but robots can also be cute, like Wall-E or Pepper 😁                                  

That’s right, even when they are not humanoid at all, we can still relate to them

But when they look like a human, we dip into uncanny valley really fast                 

So what is your take on this? 🤔

We need a robot that can move like human, fluidly, harmoniously …

and we’re getting there, right?

Right, but also speak like a human, fluidly, harmoniously …              

… harmoniously …?

I mean, in a way that fits naturally in a dialog                                      

that seems pretty hard … wouldn’t that presuppose AGI?

Maybe we don’t need that if it can fool a lot of people a lot of the time …

Hi Sam! I came across an interesting blogpost on robots and empathy …

Yep! 😁

So this blog was all about Uncanny Valley and how we relate to robots 🤖

Seems like it makes more sense not to try …?

How do you mean?  🤔 🤔                                                               

Well, you’re the expert, but I seem to understand that it is easier to make a friendly, relatable robot that doesn’t look like a human at all

Ah, ok, yes, in a sense, yes …                                                         

For some tasks a human form makes no sense at all, e.g. industrial robots 🤖

Right 👍

But in most places where humans and robots work together, everything is built for humans

Ooh, that is a problem!

So we need robots that can interact with stuff made for humans.

Mmh, I see, so body and limbs etc. need to be human shaped

In many cases that’s exactly what you need, but there are lots of reasons why a human shape makes sense!