Do Humans Dream of Prophetic Robots?

Abstract

“Robosexuality is an abomination!” exclaimed Reverend Lionel Preacherbot in Futurama (Groening, Cohen, & Keeler, 1999), the famous science fiction sitcom. Although already today some robots are assisting in religious ceremonies (Samuel, 2020), with one even working as a priest (Himmer, 2019), robotics has not advanced far enough for human-like preacherbots like Reverend Lionel. However, contemporary social robots may have prophetic qualities, at least in the minds of some people. All robots—or machines, for that matter—are social in that they require interaction with a human operator. However, some robots are designed to be more social than others are. For example, some socially evocative robots (e.g., a robot dog for children or a therapeutic seal for the elderly) draw on the tendency of their users to imagine them as living beings and, often, rely on their desire to nurture them. Yet, proper social robots are more complex, that is, an interactive artificially intelligent machine with a face, voice, and a body that resembles a living creature, sometimes a human (e.g., Deng, Mutlu, & Matalić, 2019). Social robots are designed to work (or play) in close interaction with humans in a human-like way. Their purpose might be that of a companion, a source of information, and/or an assistant, to name a few (e.g., Kim, Sur, & Gong, 2009; Korn, 2019). At the moment, the most useful robots are neither social nor humanoid; rather, they have been designed quite practically to attend to one or more monotonous tasks. They are the automated machines used for repetitive tasks like welding, lawn mowing, packaging, and other monotonous activities requiring little machine-to-human interaction or human characteristics. On the other hand, however, many interesting and technologically advanced social robots are being developed. For example, the human-looking Furhat looks like a disembodied head and torso, and it is intended to work as a domestic helper and a chatbot.1 The semihumanoid robot Pepper was designed to read emotions and to work as, among other things, a receptionist.2 Finally, the cute little nonhumanoid Zenbo was designed to work as a home healthcare assistant.3