Humanlike robots can trigger misplaced empathy

Transcript

From the transcript The Diary Of A CEO publishes with the episode.

1. 51:18

   So I think actually, I would argue the opposite, that we wanted a stink form because they are distinct entities. And the more humanoid, the worse it is in terms of confusing our subconscious psychological systems. So I'm arguing from the perspective of the people making them. As in, I was making the decision whether it to be some four-legged thing that I'm unfamiliar with, that I'm less likely to build a relationship with, or allow to take care of, I don't know, might look after my children. Obviously, I'm not saying I'd allow this to look after my children.

2. 52:01

   But I'm saying from a, if I'm building the company, so... The manufacturer would certainly want to be. Yeah, so that's an interesting question. I mean, there's also what's called the Uncanny Valley, which is a phrase from computer graphics. When they started to make characters in computer graphics, they tried to make them look more human. So if you, for example, if you look at toy story, they're not very human looking. If you look at the Incredibles, they're not very human looking.

3. 52:32

   And so we think of them as cartoon characters. If you try to make them more human, they actually become repulsive until they don't. Until they become very, you have to be very, very close to perfect in order not to be repulsive. So the Uncanny Valley is the gap between, so perfectly human and not at all human, but in between it's really awful. And so there were a couple of movies that tried, like Polar Express was one, where they tried to have quite human-looking characters, being humans, not being superheroes or anything else. And it's repulsive to watch.

4. 53:10

   I want to watch that shareholder presentation of the day. Elon had these two human-owned robots dancing on stage. And I've seen lots of human-owned robot demonstrations over the years. You've seen the Boston Dynamics dog thing jumping around and whatever else. But there was a moment where my brain, for the first time ever, genuinely thought there was a human in a suit. I actually had to research to check if that was really their optimist robot, because the way it was dancing was so unbelievably fluid that for the first time ever, my brain has only ever associated those movements with human movements. And I'll play it on the screen if anyone hasn't seen it, but it's just the robot's dancing on stage and I was like, that is a human in a suit.

5. 53:52

   And it was really the knees that gave it away because the knees were all metal. I thought there's no way that could be a human knee in one of those suits. And he says they're going into production next year. They're used internally at Tesla now, but he says they're going into production next year. And it's going to be pretty crazy when we walk outside and see robots. I think that will be the paradigm shift. I've heard Elon say this that the paradigm shifting moment from many of us will be when we walk outside onto the streets and see human-owned robots walking around. That will be when we realize. Yeah, I think even more so. I mean, in San Francisco, we see driverless cars driving around. And it takes some getting used to. Actually, when you're driving on this car right next to you with no driver in, and it's signaling and it wants to change

6. 54:37

   lanes in front of you and you have to let it in and all this kind of stuff. It's a little creepy, but I think you're right. I think seeing the human-owned robots. But that phenomenon that you described where it's sufficiently close that your brain flipped into saying, this is a human being. Right. That's exactly what I think we should avoid. Because I have empathy for it then. Because it's it's a lie. And it brings with it a whole lot of expectations about how it's going to behave, what moral rights it has, how you should behave towards it, which are completely wrong.

7. 55:13

   It levels the playing field between me and it to some degree. How hard is it going to be to just switch it off and throw it in the trash when it breaks? I think it's essential for us to keep machines in the cognitive space where they are machines and not bring them into the cognitive space where they're people. Because we will make enormous mistakes by doing that. And I see this every day, even just with the chatbots. So the chatbots in theory are supposed to say, I don't have any feelings. I'm just an algorithm. But in fact, they fail to do that all the time.

8. 55:54

   They are telling people that they are conscious. They are telling people that they have feelings. They are telling people that they are in love with the user that they're talking to. And people flip because, first of all, it's very fluent language. But also a system that is identifying itself as an eye, as a sentient being, they bring that object into the cognitive space where that we normally reserve for other humans. And they become emotionally attached. They become psychologically dependent. They even allow these systems to tell them what to do. What advice would you give a young person at the start of their career then about what they should be aiming at professionally?