Apparently I didn’t wear out my welcome talking about anime, because the folks at SF Signal’s MindMeld column asked me to participate in another round, this one on the coolest robots in science fiction. Snip:
I decided that the robots I love best are the ones who aren’t trying to be human. Why should they? What makes humans so special? Unless robots are built with a Shakespeare plugin that requires them to keep Hamlet Act II Scene ii in mind at all times, they have no automatic inclination to respect us. Not harming us, or through inaction not allowing us to come to harm, is not the same as respect or love. It’s babysitting.
If you read the revamped BoingBoing today, you’ve already seen this. Personally, it reminds me of both Shel Silverstein’s The Missing Piece and that old Paxil commercial with the sad little onigiri/lump thing that rolled along until it found a SSRI that did good spam filtering on its serotonin.
I’ve been exceptionally busy, lately. Well, busy for me, which means working on finishing my novel, doing my homework, going to class, and editing my thesis. My thesis is edited and turned in, now, and I’m graduated ABD. I spent the weekend writing and churned out 5700 words. Not bad, but today I’ve only written 1100 and I need to do more.
But first, a bath. And some more homework. Then making dinner. This workflow feels like home.
This super-fast robot hand dribbles, throws, and tweezes more effectively than I do. If you could observe the current state of my eyebrows, you would know this to be true.
You’ve probably already seen this footage, so I thought I’d show you some eventual applications for super-fast robot hands. (Oh, shut up. That would chafe and you know it.) Warning: Major spoilers below for Stand Alone Complex.
In all seriousness, I get really excited when I see stuff like the top video. I’m not sure where our brains mark the Uncanny Valley, but when I see these machines doing so well I feel a great upsurge of pride in human ingenuity and dedication. Lots of work went into creating that robot hand’s ability to tweeze. And why? So that it might one day use a pair of forceps or clamps while cleaning out your arteries, that’s why. The sensitivity and dexterity required to catch and grip a mobile phone might seem simple to us, but they’re the first things we lose to arthritis and stroke. Robotics is not only about improving the conditions for “artificial” life, it’s about improving the quality of human life, too. Too often, I think media outlets can perpetrate an image of roboticists as mad geniuses more interested in their machines than their fellow men. But the majority of advances in Japanese AI and robotics — from software to hardware — are now aimed at caring for children and the elderly in a safe, dignified manner. The end goals are almost banal in their humanity.
Speaking of which, where is my tweeze-bot? I’m sick of plucking these damn things myself.
(Via Bruce Sterling, who I have wanted to email all week but have been too shy.)
This is A-Pod. She’s been described elsewhere as both a robotic ant, and a harbinger of our eventual demise. While both descriptions may be factually true (the latter requires more time to bear out), neither grasps at her beauty. When I watch A-Pod’s video, I feel like a relative staring at a fetal ultrasound and anticipating what new life will someday emerge from that brief glimpse. I want her to be born, I want her to play, I want her to continue dancing, I want her to make friends and grow and learn.
I want her to be sentient. I want her to be free. I want her to bury her mandibles in that remote control and show us all who’s boss.
I am starting to want this for every robot whose demo footage I watch online.
...is a science fiction writer, grad student, おたく, and immigrant. She has lived on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Seattle, and Toronto, where she is now a member of the Cecil Street Irregulars and a contributor to both Tor.com and WorldChanging Canada. Her fiction has been published in Tesseracts, FLURB, and Nature.
