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The Birth of Robot
In 1921, the Anglosphere was captivated by a play that was just translated into English.Titled R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots (RossumoviUniverzálníRoboti), the story—by Cezch writer Karel Čapek—centered around a fictional factory that produced humanoid machines to perform dull, menial, or physically demanding labor. The machines, called robots, gradually grew resentful toward their conditions of existence and consequently revolted against their human overlords.The play quickly drew critical acclaim for its socially progressive message and was well-received by the public. Soon afterwards, the word robot entered English lexicon – the rest was history.
What was talked about a good deal at the time and, unfortunately, quite forgotten now is that the word robot was synthesized by Čapek from the Czech word robota, which has extensive roots in Eastern Europe’s prolonged history with serfdom (cf. corvée).Robotameans forced labor.
Image Source: Library of Congress
In the ensuing decades, despite many following Čapek’slead in trying to understand the then emergent global order’s insatiable hungerforrobots of all kinds, the word shed its critical connotation in time, and came to signify, for the most part, a mechanical automaton, humanoid or not.In the industrial sector whereit proved increasingly important, the robot, according to the International Organization of Standard (ISO) is simply an “automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator”.
Doesn’t sound like something that could overthrow us in a silent moonless dark night, does it?
The Present Day
Today, when we speak of robots, go-toassociations range from semi-sentientLego-blocks-on-top-of-each-otherin events to whizzingassembly line mechanical arms in mirthlesschoreographed motions.They entertain crowds – from tradeshow floor to late night show studio,carry outpreprogrammed manual labor, perform dangerous or highly skilled tasks, write poetry, paint picture, etc.
Setting aside the increasingly blurred distinction between AI and humanoid robots, the present inquiry focuses on one particular aspectof robots vis-à-vis their human masters – communication.
From the earliest mythologies to the latest tales, one of the recurring longings among humans across history seems to be to meet our counterpart on the species level, be it on this planet or in outer space.
And with that fatigue towards our fellow humans simmering all this time,to tell a story, it turns out, worksmuch better when the narrator has somequalities.With all fairness, Čapek’s play likely wouldn’t have moved as many audiences as easily if instead of robots, those who were driven to revolt by forced labor were actual human serfs – whose real living conditions, by the way,remained slave-like for centuries, if not longer, without eliciting much sympathy from all around.
Similar stories, same gist, but with a much more noticeable medium– the thing that was created to demonstrate a point in a play wasthus taken on its grand journey, not unlike a human, to become not only something more, but someone more.
Image source: CNET
Enigmarelle
To understand the appeal of robotswith the crowd in marketing, we need to backtrack a bit, to slightly more than a century ago.
In early 1906, the journal Scientific American reported that a new sensation had been sweeping across London.Described as a “Marvelous Electrical Wonder”, “The Scientific Sensation of the Age”, what’s been making headlines and turning heads after heads was Enigmarelle an alleged mechanical and electrical automation. Standing at exactly six feet, one paper advertised it as a “mechanical man that does everything but talk”, another went further, calling it “The Devil in Vaudeville”.
The Scientific American, being unapologeticallyscientific, paid little attention to the wild reactions by the audience – which constituted nothing less than an advertising wonder at the time, and instead embarked on a scrupulous endeavor to describe how the thing worked.A motor here triggered this movement, causing that spring to bounce into action, etc. etc. What they, or indeed most people didn’t know at the time was that, ironically,underneath the fancy costume and seeming scientific exactitudes, an actual human operated the shell.
Carrying all the trademark characteristics of a robot, present day readers may find this whole affair obvious and farcical.But to onlookers at the time, there’s something akin to pure magic inEnigmarellethat kept them spellbound to virtually everything it did on stage. For despite the act of actual humans impersonating something that’s not entirely human nor un-human being an age-old crowd-pleasing technique, this one was said to be backed up by science, the enigmatic forces behind the relentless waves of transformation that made each generation see the world differently than the last – something utterly unthinkable until around then.
So, understandably, in that hitherto greatest age of scientific progress, as neither human nor God, Enigmarelle captivated audiences wherever it toured, demonstrating a far more benign side of science than Čapek’srebelling robots, nonetheless something entirely outside the average person’s imagination.Perhaps as a side effect of its revenue-generating schemes, Enigmarelle’s success showcased to the public scientific progress – in unsophisticated terms – that are simultaneously eye-catching and educative. An almost perfect medium for communication.
And it worked for the company behind the shows, marvelously.
The Fin de Siècle Lego Blocks
One of the most symbolic creatures that neatly sums up turn-of-the-century endeavors towardshumanoid robot was ASIMO – the name ahomage to American sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov.It wasfirst created by Honda in 2000, and had been fairly active in public eventsuntil its retirement in 2018.
The first iteration of the robotwas, by all accounts, exactly somethingyou’d expect from the late 90s. A smoother-around-the-joints version of its predecessor the P3, ASIMO reminded one of what would astronauts look likeifa much lighter exoskeleton spacesuitwere to be invented. Having a prehensile paw with five fingers, ASIMO could grasp, walk, run, jump, and even hop around on one leg.
Despite its acrobatic potentials and its showroom success with crowds – at one point even beeping out English greetings to U.S. president Barack Obama during a visit, Honda, for its part,simply hoped ASIMO could be “a partner of people, a new kind of robot with a positive function in society”.
And positive functionit did seem to qualify. From sign language, coffee pouring, to acting as a guide for people, ASIMO wowed crowdswith humanly simple tasks that couldn’t help but make one wonder, are we really forgoing the robotapart and instead starting to treat these mechanical creatures like children. At the end of the day, though, ASIMO was an undeniable success for Honda, serving more like the brand’s public relations specialist as it demonstrated not only the company’s technological prowess, but more crucially, the household-name brand’s commitment to bettering thesocial community upon whose support it cannot exist without.
Image source: Maximalfocus on Unsplash
Ai-Da the Painter
If one place measurable expectations ona crudely human-looking bot like ASIMO, it wouldn’t be a surprise that for a more realistically version, the expectation – especially those coming from younger generations who practically grew up on social media,is much higher.
Ai-Da touted by some as the world’s first “ultra-realistic humanoid robot”, might not be able to park herself (yes, it’s a her) in front of an audience and wow them with jaw-dropping acrobatics, but she writes poetry,and paints just the way human painters have painted across centuries.
Hidden beneath her human-like skull are AI algorithms that allow Ai-Da to intake information, make decisions, and paint a realistic picture. “I like to paint what I see”, she professes.And she considers herself an artist – that is, if art “means communicating something about who we are and whether we like where we are going”. In this sense, artist Ai-Da’s job is to “illustrate the world around you”.
Image Source: The Guardian
To the robot’s creator, Aidan Meller, the paintings or poems are not necessarily anend in and of themselves. We are at the beginning of an era that the distinction between human and machine is becoming increasingly ambiguous, he said, and robots like Ai-Da, caught in the crossroads, communicate to us the dilemma that many of us are pretending nonexistent,justfrom a much different perspective.
For companies, however, this dilemma doesn’t necessarily have to take precedence of the bot’s communicative potentials. In addition to being a much more sentient version of Asimo and co., ultra-realistic humanoid bots like Ai-Da can – technically speaking – be acting as ambassadors for brands that so far looked very popular with younger, more tech-savvy generations.
Last Few Thoughts
The prospect of having increasingly human-like robots existing alongside us might haveappearedquite appealing at one point. With all fairness, it doesn’t sound half as bad having a smarter version of AISMO as a robot butler that on top of managing a household with meticulous exactitude per your instructions, also artfully doall kinds of product promotions to you based on what you need and want.
After all, as hopelessly tactile creatures, it must be admitted that it feels completely different to have a digital bot typing out words at us in the ether than to have an actual android talkingand doing things in front of us.As long as we get over the initial eeriness, as kids who have been introduced to robots at an early age have demonstrated to be an entirely artificial barrier, we tend to be much more willing to pay attention to the same thing when done by robots – which for professional who provide advertising agency services, has been for decades as much a rich opportunity for progressing strategic communications techniques as it is a daunting challenge.
But that’s the traditional robot, the laborer who does what we have to but don’t want to do.
With the age of big data and social media dawning upon us so unannouncedly, AI-powered robots like Ai-Da gives the whole concept of robot a previously unattainable new lease of life. Instead of executing preprogrammed orders, robots now have a real prospect to performspontaneous contextual communication just the way humans do, and not just on something that others want them to communicate, but what they are capable of communicating –in the case of Ai-Da, what she feels like communicating.
Would you be willing to have a smart robot butler that in addition to performing all your unwanted chores, paints and writes in its spare time and talks to you intelligently about them?
Perhaps,to paraphrase Ai-Da creator Aidan Meller, the question for us humans of yet another modern age (the word modern has been used repeatedly throughout European history to capture different moments that were nonetheless, new in some regard) is not can robots do something anymore – the answer to that is a yes, but rather, do humans really want them to.
In other words, are we ready to share some of the most defining human characteristicswith what some consider, in their own right, anotherintelligent lifeform?
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