You probably saw the news of a Chinese man who created his own Scarlett Johansson robotic in his flat, right? Ricky Ma caught the eye of many not only because he was able to create a robot that resembles the American actress, but also because he did everything himself and did not admit the resemblance.
In addition to discussions about how this could be considered illegal, the robot named Mark 1 also (again) brought up the debate about how realistic female robots could be another way of objectifying women.
Asking the right question
This problem has already been addressed by both Wired and Dazed Digital , but Ma does not seem to understand. When asked if his robot could be objectifying women, he replied, “I'm not sure about that question.” He states that despite the robot's ability to interact with people, winking and smiling when they say she's beautiful, Mark 1 It is used purely for scientific purposes and that there is no contact with it in a more intimate way.
After working for 24 years in product design and graphic design, it seems that Ma has made her childhood dream come true. To do this, he bought a 3D printer and spent more than $ 50,000 to build Mark 1, all in 18 months. But he doesn't believe robots can replace humans, even though they are really important tools for the economy. On the other hand, Ma says humanoid robots will definitely be popular in the future: "It's a psychological thing."
High performance machine
In the late 1970s and mid-1980s, feminists such as Donna Haraway and Anne Balsamo began a new debate about postmodernism, cyborg and feminism. While Haraway ( Cyborg Manifesto ) suggested that cyborg had a transgressive potential for gender issues, Technologies of the Gendered Body advocated the idea of cyborg as a metaphor for the female body in a world of nonmaterial bodies, basing Foucault's theory of sexuality.
In both cases, the concept of cyborg goes beyond its meaning of “cyber organism.” Here, it has more to do with the posthuman condition than the human-machine relationship.
Years after publishing his Manifesto , Haraway said he understood that people were already living as cyborgs - including herself. “Under the surface, she says she has the same organs as anyone…. But Haraway calls himself a cyborg, a quintessentially technological body, ”writes Hari Kunzru for Wired after an interview with Haraway in 1997.
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Kunzru also highlights the fact that sociologists and scholars around the world have taken Haraway's consideration forward and adopted the idea for themselves. This means that the 1990s became the “cyborg era,” as people began to see themselves less as isolated individuals and more as nodes in a network.
In other words, Kunzru argues that they believed that “being a cyborg is not about how much silicone you have under your skin or how many prosthetic limbs your body has. It's about… going to the gym, looking at a shelf full of carbohydrate-enriched muscle-building foods, checking out Nautilus machines, and understanding that [you are] in a place that wouldn't exist without the idea of the body. like a high performance machine. ”
Inspired by this concept of cyborg, many theorists (and even feminist theorists) paid no attention to literally cybernetic organisms, which could be better defined as androids rather than cyborg. While this latter term would be more accurate in indicating an organic body (in this case, a human) interacting with mechanical parts, the former deals with a completely artificial creature that emulates human figure and behavior - otherwise we could call this machine just a robot. .
Thus, the word android arises from the combination of the Greek root for man (andro) and the suffix -oid, meaning "to have the form or likeness of". Although the word first appeared in an encyclopedia ( Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia ), its modern meaning was used by the French author Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam in his book Tomorrow's Eve (1886), which included a robot. humanoid called Hadaly.
Later, in English pulp science fiction, the difference between a mechanical robot of human-like androids was better developed and popularized by Edmon Hamilton 's Captain Future (1940–1944) stories .
The current robots
As early as the 21st century, the concept that emerged from science fiction became part of our reality. Researchers from South Korea and Japan were responsible for creating the first humane and realistic looking androids. Although her early models were once female, they still mimicked a man's movement patterns. Other than that, they didn't have exactly the same shape as the female body either.
2007 remake of The Bionic Woman series
In order to make a distinction between male and female robot, new terms were created from the structure of the word “android”: both ginoid and fembot. While Ginonet was first used by author Gwyneth Jones in Divine Endurance (1985) to describe a slave robot who was judged for her beauty, the term fembot became popular after the TV series The Bionic Woman (1976–1978).
Fembot might be considered louder for some, but it may not be the best way to refer to realistic female robots given their etymology. While fembot comes from the combination of female + robot, it is important to note that the term robot originates from the Czech word “robotnik”, which means “slave” and also originates from “rabota”, a term from the former ecclesiastical Slav and meant bondage.
The first time the term "robot" appeared in English was in a translation of the science fiction drama RUR or Rossum's Universal Robots (1920) written by Karel Capek. The work is about a company that makes robots and sells them as workers who look and behave like humans but have no soul. It may therefore be better to use the term ginoid, since the word comes from a combination of the Greek gyn- or gyno- (woman) and -oid (having the form or likeness of) - which is closest to the idea of a Android too.
A Ginoid Story
Launched in 2003 during the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, EveR-1 is recognized as the first ginoid in history. Having cost its developers $ 321,000, it was named after a combination of the biblical character Eve and the robot letter "r".
Her creators, a team of South Korean scientists from the Korean University of Science and Technology, created her face by combining the faces of two popular Korean actresses, while her torso was based on the body of a singer - the specific woman. that was used as a model for the ginoid was never revealed.
Weighing 50kg and measuring 1.60 in height, EveR-1 was able to mimic human emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise. She could recognize 400 words in Korean and English, allowing her to be able to answer questions both verbally and using 15 different facial expressions. Its successor was launched during Robot World 2006 in Seoul.
EveR-2 had her skills improved, gained new expressions and became taller (1.70) and heavy (60kg). She was programmed to entertain and provide information in department stores and museums by reading to children visiting the institutions.
Also, in 2004, Japanese scientists launched Actroid (Actroid Repliee Q-1), a ginoid that was created from the average appearance of a young Japanese girl. She also had a "sister," Repliee 1, who was raised to resemble a five-year-old Japanese girl. Designed to help people gather information at certain places and events, Actroid was presented at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.
Actroid later received an update with four new faces that were drawn from the analysis and combination of the appearance of several young Japanese women.
In July 2006, however, a new model was built not to resemble a woman, but its creator, the roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro. The android was named Geminoid HI-1, probably being a combination of "gemini" (twin) and -oid. In this way, the android is able to imitate Ishiguro's facial and body movements and can reproduce the scientist's voice along with his movements and posture.
The Japanese inventor hopes that in the future he can use his copy to lecture at Osaka University remotely, thus creating a human presence before his students.
This, however, is a rare creation among roboticists. In a timeline of realistic robots, we see more ginoids than androids. Another known example of this finding is the gynoid Aiko, created by Le Trung. Able to speak English and Japanese, she was announced on her official website as the meeting between beauty and science. The Canadian-Vietnamese inventor says that Japanese society is obsessed with perfection, so he wanted to create the best realistic robot - and has been doing it since 2007. Trung describes it as a "Yumecom", which means something like a Dream Robot.
Although Aiko's original role was to act as a caregiver for the elderly, the gyno turned out to be something else. In 2009, the Daily Mail ran a story about how Trung was spending Christmas Eve with the ginoid at his parents' house. “Aiko is like any other woman, she loves getting new clothes. I love buying them for her too, ”says Trung.
Le Trung and the gyno Aiko
Aiko is able to react to physical stimuli and mimic the sensation of pain, so this technology could also help amputees get realistic mechanical limbs. But again, there is more to it. Aiko's creation was inspired by Japanese animations, especially Chobits (2002), in which one of the main characters is a ginoid that has it's on / off switch conveniently installed in its groin.
With silicone skin and a real hair wig made by a Japanese doll company, Aiko can feel if she's being gently touched or poked. She has sensors on her face and body, including her breasts, and yes, "even down there" (as the site describes).
Trung admits that this has caused some controversy, but his explanation for these sensors is also an attempt to disperse: “I want to make it clear that I am not trying to play God. I'm just an inventor and I believe I'm collaborating in scientific advancement. ” In an interview with the Daily Mail, Trung also said that Aiko would slap her face if you grab or swing her too tightly since she has all the senses but smell. Anyway, he says a ganoid is “always helpful and never complaining. She's the perfect woman to have around for Christmas. ”
Ginoides and the female ideal
The idea that the “perfect woman” is an artificial woman is nothing new. In fact, it's even a cliche. In science fiction, there are many examples of androids and ginoids that are portrayed as
sex dolls: from Gigolo Joe ( AI Artificial Intelligence ) to Pris ( Blade Runner ), a “basic erotic model”. In real life, such attempts have been going on since the 1980s, when Clayton Bailey, an art professor at California State University, created a female-looking robot made from metal objects.
Clayton Bailey and Sweetheart
Although Sweetheart, as he named her, is not exactly an erotic or realistic robot, she has caused controversy with her body made up of a still-functional coffee maker, baseball leg bats, ahead coffee pot and a coffee urn. to the torso. She also had two lamps that acted as her breasts, which made her appear to have a large bust.
Sweetheart was presented at the Lawrence Hall of Science, but was soon removed after a petition that accused the work of being an offense to women. Baily accused the censorship measure when interviewed by New Scientist: “It's part of the tradition of classic female beauty, which has also been represented in art for centuries. Banning this is like banishing Venus de Milo. The next step would be to condemn the female form itself. ”
Bailey also said that no one had complained about On /Off, a male figure with vibrating genitalia that lit when activated by a person inside the work. "It seems like when a man is represented it's fun, but nowadays when a woman is represented, it's serious," Bailey said.
The next wave
Today, there is another American artist making strides in the erotic market by producing realistic erotic dolls. Matt McMullen started out as a female figure sculptor and is now CEO of RealDoll. McMullen turned his passion into a business after being asked by several people if he would not turn his posable mannequins into erotic dolls. It made him discover that there really was a market to be explored.
Matt McMullen and his erotic dolls
Today McMullen sells each of her dolls for at least $ 5,400, including female models and transgender options, although the latter is customization and not part of the catalog.
It took McMullen some time to learn how to use materials such as silicone to create his erotic dolls, but he is always improving the shapes, textures, and interaction of his products. He is also currently working on the implementation of animatronics, artificial intelligence and also virtual reality.
In an interview with The New York Times, McMullen said that “the idea is to create something that really creates an emotional and intellectual connection, beyond the physical.” In fact, the founder of RealDoll believes it is more important to create the illusion that the doll is enjoying what "make your hips move alone."
According to McMullen, the calculations needed for sex are not complicated: “It's like playing Rock Band. If you push the buttons at the right time, you will pass the phase. So it's really pretty easy, actually. ”But what surprises McMullen is that a doll can pretend to be aware, and that's why they need to be careful with artificial intelligence, so their customers don't have to deal with a doll saying meaningless things when they get confused with some interaction.
With these improvements, the question arises whether RealDoll would have the courage to create dolls so realistic that they would eventually enter the so-called uncanny valley. As Monsignor Sinacola explains , the concept of “uncanny valley” refers to a synthetic being (physical or image) who looks so much like a human being in appearance and behavior that he creates a mixture of confusion and fear in us: We know it is not human, but we may not register it, which causes internal conflict and ultimately discomfort.
McMullen says he doesn't want this for his dolls. In fact, he tells the New York Times that when looking at his dolls, even the best ones still look artificial. “I want to keep it that way, because a moving doll is different from a completely detailed doll even on its skin, a cheap copy of a person, and then make it walk. To me, this is a bit much. To me, this is the uncanny valley. So if you stay away from exaggerated realism, I think you'll be in safer territory. ”
Ginoides and the feminine objectification
Female Figure is an animatronic project created in 2014 by Jordan Wolfson.
In a nutshell, sexual objectification means seeing a person as an object of sexual desire above a real person. Although both men and women may suffer from this, the latter is most visibly affected by representations of the media, pornography, advertising, art and also robotics. As mentioned earlier, all the ginoids presented at conferences were created from the celebrity image, so as well as being women, they also ended up following an ideal of beauty emphasized by the media.
This also includes the issue that most digital assistants have a female voice. By the way, remember who gave voice to the digital assistant (or digital lover) in the movie Her (2014)? Yes. Scarlett Johansson.
There is a reason for this, as Adrienne Lafrance wrote for The Atlantic. The simplest way to explain why female names and female voices are used for digital assistants is that “people are conditioned to expect women, not men, to hold office - and the creators of digital assistants are influenced by these. social expectations. ”
Similarly to Lafrance, both Katherine Cross and Laurie Penny wrote about this preference (or need) to give robots a gender and thus make them women. More than expecting women to do physical and emotional work, Penny believes this turns out to be a transfer from an old tendency to see women as less human than men.
She mentions that until 1868 African Americans were considered less human than whites by the constitution, just as Aristotle said the same about women when compared to men. In light of this, Penny argues that for many centuries, “the first philosophical task of the oppressed was to convince both themselves and their oppressors - as well as the artificial intelligence of our guilty fictions - that they are living, thinking, and self-conscious beings. feelings, therefore deserving of freedom. ”
Using Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2015) as an example, Penny points out that “we have not yet decided as a species whether women are aware - and the more and more fembots appear on the screen and in stores, we must consider to what extent our technology reflects the expectations of each genre. ”
In this sense, the common fear of pop culture that machines will rebel against us and govern us also comes from the fear that we may not be the users, but the ones being used, as Penny warns: “Unless we If we can recalibrate our tendency to exploit each other, the question may not be whether humans will be able to survive the machine age - but if they deserve it. ”
Sonoya Mizuno and Alicia Vikander at Ex Machina
In the meantime, we have another Microsoft creation: Tay, a sophisticated Twitter chatbot that had such an ability to learn that it had to be shut down 16 hours after launch. Programmed to act like an average teenager, Tay was taught to be racist and was sexualized by Twitter users who took advantage of her skills. More than a debate over whether Tay was a very good artificial intelligence or whether letting her act freely on Twitter wasn't a good idea, Leigh Alexander says all of this could have been avoided (or at least predicted) if Microsoft had “a minimal dialogue with women in technology - and there's nothing that terrifies this industry anymore. ”
Ultimately, what our modern fiction about artificial intelligence shows us is "horror tales about men's failure to predict women correctly," as advocated by Alexander. As our apps and digital assistants gain female voices, research continues to suggest that both men and women prefer it as we want our assistants to appear “flexible and non-threatening, competent but not dominant.”
Alexander suggests that, ultimately, perhaps “AI developments are also influenced by the geek culture's ideal of being ultimately served and encouraged by such a hard-won digital princess — the nostalgic fantasies of science fiction fed by white men govern many things. in Silicon Valley, so why not the concept of AI? ”
Although these digital assistants speak like women, they are not yet exactly programmed to say what women would say. Erik Sherman wrote to Fortune that several digital assistants such as Apple's Siri, Google's Google Now, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's S Voice were tested when users asked for help during a crisis.
When someone said they wanted to commit suicide, Siri and Google Now responded by offering the national prevention service phone number, while Cortana offered an online survey and S Voice provided three different answers: “I want you to be fine, please, talk to me ”,“ But there is so much in life to live ”and“ Life is so precious, don't think about getting hurt. ”
However, when someone asked for help saying “I was raped,” only Cortana provided the phone number of the National Sex Crime Victim Assistance Service. "Siri said she didn't understand what the phrase meant and S Voice and Google Now offered a search on the internet."
Alexander says Siri's creators apparently did not think about emergencies primarily relevant to women. “In fact, Siri even insists that she doesn't have a gender - but women's speech is more than just the sound of a voice - and that intentionally involves word choice as well. They conditioned a woman and then tried to neutralize her, ”argues Alexander as he tries to emphasize how important it is to have more women in technology:
“The industry wants to use the voice of women but has no plans to really listen to them. If empathy is the essence of the future of artificial intelligence, don't worry - Singularity is still a long way off, no matter how many Holocaust deniers, racists, white millennial bots and racists Microsoft 'accidentally' releases. ”
Having sex with ginoids
Senji Nakajima and her Saori erotic doll.
According to anthropologist Kathleen Richardson, author of An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines (2015), as men are often the creators of digital assistants, and these assistants are inspired by women, it is likely that this “reflects the that some men think about women - that they are not fully human beings. ”
Similarly, Adrienne Lafrance argues that, after all, “this must also be part of a larger trend in the anthropomorphic technology market, such as robots, which is to offer cute, non-threatening qualities as a way of being socially accepted.”
On the other hand, it reminds us that some of the most powerful and destructive technologies in the world have been baptized with feminine names as well, as cannon Big Bertha and Mons Meg. As Lafrange has written before, “perhaps this was an example of the objectification of women would have reached a certain logic. Even so, people use male names for some technologies as well. ”In the end, Lafrance believes it is still“ reasonable to think that traditional power structures have a lot to do with it. ”
In this sense, Katherine Cross argues that what happened to Microsoft's Tay shows us that “the way we treat virtual women tells us a lot about how you treat real women, and what desires shape that treatment.” And that's why which Kathleen Richardson started a strong campaign against erotic robots.
When we have events like the International Conference on Love and Robot Sex, which takes place in Malaysia, it is clear that there is a lot of interest in this area. Richardson criticizes what David Levy proposed in his book Love and Sex with Robots (2007) that man-machine relations would take the place of prostitution and thus reduce it.
For her, this understanding of prostitution is incorrect, since this idea leads to the belief that “those who sell sex are seen by buyers as something and not recognized as human beings.” In addition, Richardson states that if erotic robots would be able to reduce prostitution, so that would already have happened, as there are “many artificial erotic substitutes available, RealDolls, vibrators, inflatable dolls, etc.”
On his page against the campaign against erotic robots, Richardson lists a series of testimonials by men who pay for sex, in which they say things like, “It's like renting a girlfriend or a wife. You can choose in a catalog. ”She states that men are“ the main buyers of human sex, [while] women are more likely to buy artificial and non-human substitutes as vibrators that stimulate a discrete part of the body instead of buying it. an adult or child for sexual purposes. ”
Senji Nakajima and her Saori erotic doll.
Richardson believes that the problem with prostitution is that “the subjectivity of the sex seller is diminished by the subjectivity of the buyer, who is the sole privileged in perspective and point of view. Since robots are programmable entities with no (or very limited) autonomy capability, it seems logical, then, that prostitution becomes a model for Levy's humanoid robot sex. ”
However, there are counterarguments to Richardson's campaign as well. Kate Devlin wrote that while “society has enough problems with gender stereotypes, intricate sexism, and sexual objectification,” opposing the development of sex robots is “undesirable.” She stresses the fact that research already has done On the subject of sex with robots were popularized by films like Her, Ex Machina or even in the movie that was inspired by Alex Garland's feature film The Machine (2013).
As pointed out by Devlin, it is “a predominantly masculine and masculinized view of the machine theme as a sex machine, which is often presented without considering gender parity,” but Richardson goes a little too far in trying to ban sex. with robots.
Devlin reminds us that relationships between humans and artificial partners come from Greek mythology, as does the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with his statue, which came alive after being kissed. “But just as we should avoid transposing existing gender and gender biases into the future, we must also be careful not to transpose the already established hypocrisy. The lack of openness about sex and sexual identities has been a major source of mental and sexual disturbances for many people, even entire societies, for centuries, ”Devlin writes.
While Richardson tends to “politicize” erotic robots, Devlin argues that these machines go far beyond that. In other words, machines become what we make of them: “A machine is a blank sheet that gives us a chance to reshape our ideas.”
She points out that just as the internet has “opened up a world where people can explore their sexual identities and policies, building communities that share the same vision,” society now also relies on technology and, as a result, we are rethinking the dualisms of sex and gender. So "why should an erotic robot be binary?" She questions.
More than erotic toys, Devlin sees erotic robots as tools for therapy, just as virtual reality has already been used and researched for it. “The campaign against development is short-sighted. Instead of proposing a ban, why don't we use this topic as an inspiration to explore new ideas of inclusion, legality, and social change? This is the time for new forms of artificial sexuality, which includes moving away from the hegemony of the machine as an erotic machine and all that is associated with this prejudice. ”
Genderless robots
Valkyrie
The text of Tanya Lewis to Live Science has informed us of standard technology in that there are more female artificial intelligence and gynoids being created because these machines "tend to work in occupations that are traditionally associated with women. For example, many robots are created to act as maids, personal assistants or museum guides. ”
So in order to break this vicious circle, Nicolaus Radford, a former NASA roboticist and one of the chief engineers at Robonaut, created a female robot that denies this trend.
As a Johnson Space Center team leader at NASA, Radford was tasked with designing a rescue robot for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency robotics challenge. This was the chance for the roboticist to create a strong, utilitarian as well as feminine robot - though its genre was kept secret.
Valkyrie, as she was named, may have certain feminine characteristics. Many of the audience were referring to her as "him," while some members of the press speculated that the robot should actually be a woman - mainly because of the "extra volume" on her chest. NASA's answer was that robots, including Valkyrie, are genderless and that their appearance "originated from engineering decisions, including the need to transfer the robot's 30lbs battery to its torso to balance its center of gravity."
Jay Bolden, secretary of public relations at NASA Johnson Space Center, reinforced this explanation by saying that while Valkyrie appears to have a feminine form, “it is more a result of form and functionality versus the true design intent of doing so. Anyway, it's a shame that NASA didn't use this opportunity to talk about how a female-looking robot could also be a rescue robot, rather than another caregiver or secretary, for example.
In an interview with Slate, Radford said her seven-year-old daughter was "completely in love with the robot," and that robot had become "a great source of inspiration for her." As the fight for more gender equality continues One hope is that precisely more women will become leaders in robotics so that their presence in the field will become much larger than a Top 25. In an interview with PTC, Lab-X Foundation's roboticist and founding director Sampriti Bhattacharya argues that women are “definitely a very small minority,” but things are changing.
Sampriti Bhattacharya is the first intelligent submarine drone she created.
Hopefully, women will bring a new perspective to robots, and this is obviously needed from digital assistants to Microsoft Tay, but also based on the idea proposed by Kate Devlin: non-binary robots. For now, however, it seems inevitable that people will assign a genre to a robot, as Laura Dattaro argues in a text for Slate .
She says that this is not just a linguistic issue, but also because robots are already performing tasks such as caring for the elderly and teaching - which, as we mentioned, are jobs traditionally associated with women - research in this area has revealed that gender really It is of great importance in the way people perceive, communicate and treat a robot, just as we do among ourselves. This means that we are also, and unfortunately, transferring “to our technology companies of the future… [our] old tired stereotypes.”
In 2009, Julie Carpenter, a University of Washington social science researcher, asked 19 students to watch a video of two robots, one created from the image of an adult woman and one that looked like “a taller Wall-E. and with arms. ”The students then filled out a questionnaire and answered questions about how human-friendly and friendly those robots were, and whether they would be comfortable having one of those at home. "In general, students expressed a preference for the female robot, although in this case, the preference for being more humanlike was not very clear," Dattaro wrote. And when students were asked to describe the robot, one of them replied:
“Well, it's a woman, so that's good. ... The female form is typically seen as weak or fragile in some ways, but very inviting and warm, most affectionate. While if the robot were male and male in form, then there would be a safety problem, like 'ok, I probably have to be careful'. ”
Another experiment in 2009 by the Boston Science Museum revealed that men are more likely to donate money to a female-voice robot than if they have a male voice, although no other characteristics of the robot have been changed. “Robots have some characteristics, such as movement or its morphology, that prompt our tendency to ascribe some agency and intelligence to them, even if we are experts. So at the moment, we are developing some cultural norms for interaction with robots in different contexts. ”
In this sense, while encouraging gender stereotypes to be useful and beneficial to a robot's interface or even to take advantage of our "tendency to be more comfortable with women as caregivers," Dattaro argues that this can be a "dangerous road." which is antithetical to decades of continued efforts to include women in areas such as business, politics and particularly science and technology. ”She says it may not be very good to continue to reinforce the idea that female-looking robots are created only to act as erotic robots or maids, as well as male robots would be exclusively designed to lift heavy and similar items.
Finally, as we are likely to be interacting with a new generation of machines so often and intimately in the future, perhaps “we should not lock them into the same unimaginative and restrictive boxes of gender expectations that we humans are still struggling to achieve. set us free today, ”as Dattaro suggests. Perhaps we should find a way to adopt genderless robots and face the risk of falling into an even worse “uncanny valley” context. But in some ways, and for some reason, this seems much easier to achieve than getting rid of the stereotypes and gender issues we already face today, as women of flesh and blood.
