Will the Real Human Being Please Stand Up?

They’re called “Geminoids” … robots literally built to resemble and mimic real human beings. And in case you are wondering, the gentleman on the right is actor Brent Spiner who played Commander Data on the very successful Star Trek: the Next Generation television series. The “gentleman” on the left is an android: “This new Geminoid comes from Aalborg University in Denmark … , called Geminoid-DK, appears to really breathe and perform involuntary muscular reactions.” CrunchGear.com, March 4^th. He nods, smiles and generally seems to be able to provide facial expressions very much like a human being. Geminoid-DK is also the first realistic Geminoid to be built outside of Japan; roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro constructed his mechanical doppelganger (Geminoid HI-1) in 2005.

HI-1 was built at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories near Kyoto. “Ishiguro is mainly using the bot to teach his classes for him, and creep out students with lifelike movements such as blinking, ‘breathing’ and fidgeting. The bot can be remotely controlled via a motion capture system that tracks Ishiguro's mouth movements and allows the bot to speak his voice -- or that of an assistant if he's feeling particularly listless. The incredible realism comes from silicone molds cast from Ishiguro's own body, similar to the process behind a certain female resident of the uncanny valley, and is a bit of an experiment in the viability of telepresence.” Engadget.com, July 21, 2006. Motion capture, eh? Not a real, self-contained computer. Whew!

All very interesting and still pretty primitive as far as functionality is concerned, but combine the above “photorealistic” mimicking abilities with accelerating advances in computing power (including the ability continuously shrink CPU and hard drive size) and you get nervously close to a real Commander Data… in this century. The February 21^st edition of Time Magazine presents an eerie chart (pages 44-45) promulgated by Singularity theorist, Ray Kurzweil, suggesting that computing power will surpass human capability by 2023 and be able to aggregate the collective brain power of all humanity by 2045. Singularity theory focuses on the hyper-acceleration of change: while 500 years ago, the sum total of all information and data doubled every 200 years, the rate of change is moving so fast that if you take the year 2000 as one year unit of change, assuming the same rate of acceleration rate, by the year 2100, hum ananity will have experienced 20,000 year-units of change.

Even assuming the physical size of computers necessary to implement the above human capacities may exceed the robotic size variables (and I bet they will be entirely self-contained), the ability to reach into distant file server clouds wirelessly will allow just about any capacity to be controlled by very, very small control units. Yet all of this belies the ethical and definitional issues that define a human being, conjuring up fictional creations from Star Trek to the Terminator series of films.

If such computers are so complex as to be able to absorb all human knowledge with room to spare for “wasted” emotional needs, will they develop neurotic and psychotic behavior patterns through internal malfunctions or the introduction by “evil” forces of malware? Who gets the right to program these Geminoids of the future? What happens if they fall into the wrong hands? I am seeing a lot of studio executives and film/TV directors who just can’t wait to have a string of these “actors” who never get paid on their studio lots. Will one of them look like Charlie Sheen? But then again, all this does bring out some interesting questions regarding the meaning of life.

I’m Peter Dekom, and fortunately I will be dead before I am replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid… replaced by a Geminoid.