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Decidedly Human

Dumb All Over

A Little Ugly on the Side
Dumb All Over
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
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They call it the Earth (which is a dumb kinda name
Today's tabloids bring us a story about a supposed robot that is so lifelike it has "divided the internet" with controversy. It was reported in a handful of rags including the Daily Mail, Yahoo7 News, and the Mirror.

Almost forty years ago I took a trip to Disneyland in California and visited the "Hall of Presidents." It was really cool to see what the Disney Imagineers could create with a handful of actuators. Even though the robots were sculpted, painted and programmed to be as lifelike as possible, they never crossed the threshold of ultimate realism. They weren't able to fool me into believing they were real human beings. At face value, they were never anything more than mechanical robots.

Today's automatons and robots aren't much better, they just have more actuators. But they always strike me as being immediately mechanical. I've never found myself doing a double take and wondering whether a robot was so good that it made me believe it was human.

After watching the videos linked in today's stories, I knew immediately that the "robot" presented was not a robot but was a real person. Are people really so gullible as to believe this is a robot or are the rags so bad at reporting and so uncaring about the truth that they will report anything to stir interest and attempt to increase readership? I guess that was a rhetorical question.

Look at the videos. Are you fooled?
 
Examining her closely, it's pretty clear she's a person. But a cursory look did fool me for a few moments. Well played, Playstation marketing department. Well played.
 
Dumb All Over said:
After watching the videos linked in today's stories, I knew immediately that the "robot" presented was not a robot but was a real person. Are people really so gullible as to believe this is a robot or are the rags so bad at reporting and so uncaring about the truth that they will report anything to stir interest and attempt to increase readership? I guess that was a rhetorical question.
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DailyMail calls her an alleged automaton. They mention that some viewers think she is human and some think she is robot.

When they describe her as alleged you pretty much know where they stand in the evaluation. What gives the story intrigue is that you find that there are some people out there who are fooled and think she is a robot.
 
No, I wasn't fooled :confused:

Why would anybody for a millisecond believe that is anything but a human?

Interesting. I guess if you are told beforehand that what you are about to see is a robot then you may possibly see one. I've been at this site long enough to know that.

But still, there is nothing in the video that could make me believe she is not human. It does suck that I knew ahead of time though.
 
William Parcher said:
DailyMail calls her an alleged automaton. They mention that some viewers think she is human and some think she is robot.

When they describe her as alleged you pretty much know where they stand in the evaluation. What gives the story intrigue is that you find that there are some people out there who are fooled and think she is a robot.
Click to expand...

Before they called her an "alleged automaton," they called her "An incredibly 'life-like' android..." They state that in the first sentence of the story. So, what is she? An incredibly 'life-like' android or an alleged automaton? They can't have it both ways.

And I take issue with their premise that people were fooled. I guarantee the people who attended the Tokyo Game Show weren't fooled. They saw something like this:


There is one quick mention of one person who might have been fooled. "Twitter user Gareth Evans‏, who met one of her comrades at a separate games demo, said: 'I met an android today. It/she was scary." By that sentence, it is doubtful this source even attended the Tokyo Game Show and may very well have met a real and scary android.
 
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Dumb All Over said:
Before they called her an "alleged automaton," they called her "An incredibly 'life-like' android..." They state that in the first sentence of the story. So, what is she? An incredibly 'life-like' android or an alleged automaton? They can't have it both ways.

And I take issue with their premise that people were fooled. I guarantee the people who attended the Tokyo Game Show weren't fooled. They saw something like this:


There is one quick mention of one person who might have been fooled. "Twitter user Gareth Evans‏, who met one of her comrades at a separate games demo, said: 'I met an android today. It/she was scary." By that sentence, it is doubtful this source even attended the Tokyo Game Show and may very well have met a real and scary android.
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Meh. Big Deal. One of my guilty pleasures is the TV show Mountain Monsters, where six West Virginia hillbillies are supposedly trying to prove that Bigfoot, Mothman, et al, exist in Appalachia. The online fan forums are about evenly divided between the haters, the True Believers, and those of us who just think the show is fun.

Think of it as a function of statistics: Given a large enough sample, you will find people who believe anything.

I don't care what you do to the women and children, just leave me alone!
 
I suspect that with an all-out effort using the best available technology and material science, it would be possible to make an extremely lifelike performing automaton that couldn't be distinguished from a real person without directly interacting with it.

But why would a company that sells video game boxes undertake that project? They'd be spending more on a publicity prop than on the hardware they depend on for their actual business.
 
Maybe my mind has been melted by the BBC show Humans. Gemma Chan is surprisingly lifelike.
 
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