Hi Friends,

I am going to talk about a relatively explored topic, but from a new perspective. This is some line from my brother who is so distant that I feel very lonely (he is a poet and I can't get him to stop plastering cryptic lines all over the place):

I don't need a partner...
What I need is the other part of me

Image Source: Wikimedia; Author: Flickr; License: CC 2.0

This might come a little bit as an artistic pun, with no message of real value. But it very much tells a lot about humans, who we are and what we want. It expresses the human angst and our need to quell this angst arising from the human trajectories that beset us. Well, I wouldn't exactly say quell; I will say we like to pour out our anxieties and insecurities onto other people, we want them to see our pains, listen to our tears and then hold us in their arms telling us that they know how we feel.

It is this need for companionship that has driven the many parts of our existence that pulps the ecosystem. People in our professional lives must be friendly or we consider them bad eggs; our social gatherings must do one thing, make us feel loved. And yes, we go to any length to meet that one special one person that should supposedly form the other part of us.

At first, technology seemed to have no business with these quests (not when they were brainstorming on launching rockets to space, building a new Earth outside of Earth, having self driving cars)... But it's very hard not to admit that humans have not made for good companions, really. This is because every human has that need to be loved, the need for a shoulder to cry on, and no one is exactly willing to be the shoulder to be cried upon. This must have prompted the need for tech scientists to come up with inventive ways to provide extra shoulders to lean on. For what's the essence of technology if not to make life easier in every way?

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The Day before the Day

Image Source: Wikimedia; Author: The Peach Peddler; CC 2.0

By now, you should know I like to pick a thread from its very beginning; nothing good sewn by holding it from the middle. Even before technology and its array of scientists paid any serious attention to improving human interactions and relationships, people find their ways of making up for the inadequacy of their supposed companions. Ranging from young children and teenage girls who took to cuddling pinkish or whitish dolls, teddy bears and making them feel at home to the growing adult boys who couldn't manage to part with the play stations and the gangly robotic toys of their favourite super hero characters, youths had always found a way around knocking off loneliness. Adults have toys of their own, sex toys, but due to its lack of a soul, a body; it might as well be a Barbie doll.

The advent of the internet, smartphones and other handy technological pads made companionship easier for the adults. With the multuplicities of friendship and dating sites online, anonymous porn centers and all of the hook-up leverages on social media, it doesn't come as too difficult to drown one's low spirit.

And if one really does need to babble and be a mess for one night, there is the pub!

But given that these old and relatively new ways of finding companionship, however technologically aided, are occasioned by human influencers, they still have people musing about what possibilities are inherent in having fully-fledged artificial intelligence creatures as companions.

AI Companions: An Over-compensation

Image Source: Wikimedia; Author: Polimerek; CC BY SA 3.0 - Kismet

The AI scientists and developers have very well over compensated humans for their relative delay in interactive technologythrough the robotics revolution. This very well terms the industrial revolution that moved from the crevice of laboratories to the corners of homes. In easier definitions, a robot had simply been that machine, that could move beyond the regular, to perform complex tasks and activities. But with the integration of humanoids (that is, the ability of humans to have limbs, cwalk with two feet and respond to normal human stimuli), smart materials, data computation, biology and psychology into the technical, metallic composition of robotics, it is hard to tell what a robot is anymore. So that rather than operate in different domains- mechanical, electrical, computational- robots now work seamlessly across several domains, an the only there things that make a robot are no longer what technological function they perform, but the fact that they have a body, a brain and a stomach. In fact, through smart materials, a material in one domain can perform a needed function when stimulated by another domain.

These robotic mechanics are what have been put together in an attempt to make faithful companions for humans. At the very beginning of the 21st century, the Japanese expressed concern as to the need for children and elderly ones to have more caregivers. And the best option were robots. The Americans had been thinking about this even before the Japanese. So in 1996, Tamagotchi, a small, virtual robot with an egg shaped plastic screen was introduced to the children as their first virtual relational buddy. Afterwards, Furbies came in the 98s as remodified, technological Teddy bears from another planet. The Japanese then went on to create My Real Baby in 2000, some robotic baby that cried and ate and behaved like real babies. Sonny's Aibo, a robotic dog, was the first attempt to tend to the need of animal loving people. Now, children have Kismet and Cog, two humanoid highly evolved robots built by MIT to play and relate with.

Image Source: Wikimedia; Author: Tokumeigakarinoaoshima; Public Domain Licensed

It was not until 2014 that adult humans began to feel the impact of technological evolutions with regard to relational robots. And Pepper, a humanoid robot created by Softbank Robotics was to be the first to herald in this impact. Shaped in a bizarre human form (I call it bizarre because the legs are funny), Pepper has the ability to read and interpret basic human emotional responses like sadness, joy, anger. It can also read body languages, facial expressions and gestures, get to know a person's peculiar traits as well as express its own emotions or help one make decisions through its tablet. This makes it a great receptionist for businesses and tolerable companion for the elderly and lonely ones. There are also other advantages to Pepper. Being constantly connected to the news feed from all over the world can't be a problem. And yes, why am I letting this escape me, with its 3D-Camera and microphones, Pepper can see, hear and speak.

Sophisticated as Pepper was, Sophia, a creation of Hanson Robotics, came on board in 2015 and took the world by storm. Added to the fact that she had quite a more beautiful human face and an unnerving sense of humour (which sometimes was bad, and could involve threatening to destroy humans), Sophia was easily loved by many so that, without any particular effort, she got herself a Saudi Arabian citizenship, an identity as well as a spot as a TEd-X speaker.

Now it would beautiful Sophia was going political rather than into the homes of average people. So, way deep into 2017, yet another version of the hyper-realistic sex robots that respond full-on to touch, seduction and sex was released. Samantha, designed by Sergei Santos, has touch sensors all over, from her breasts to her body and private features. And with her beautiful well biologically detailed humanoid attributes, she has made her sex toy precedents look like children toy games. Although there are male sex dolls, the female counterparts are understandably more on the rise, so that men have even began to fall in love with them and make them into partners.

Image Source: Wikimedia; Author: Xavier Care; CC BY SA 4.0

Now, what has really formed the core of these relational robots is not just the mechanics of technology, it is the field of Engineering Arts who have brought in their full strategies. It is with the acumen from this field that a certain group of British Engineers are creating scary humanoid robots that can hold long conversations with people, dance, talk in several languages and scare the wits out of people.

With a combination of artistry, prosthetics and robotics, this company and its team, founded in 2004, have developed three products or human robots that are now commercially available. The RoboThespian, the first one, comes with a repertoire of songs, impressions, cartoon attitudes, jokes, and alongside its other two, they are used for several purposes - entertainment, research, education and they are to be seen in several places such as theme parks, science centers, museums and the likes?

And what's more, some of these Engineered Arts robots are modeled after several real people just as some sex dolls are replicas of dead and living celebrities like Marilyn Munroe and Angelina Jolie. An example is Fred. Fred is a one off automation that takes the exact looks, gestures and postures of Ted toy Newell, a 55 year old actor. Upon walking into a pub, Fred scared the living hell out of people when he went on to talk about a robot invasion. The irony, sponsored by NOW TV, caught on most people when they discovered he was himself a robot.

Even though Fred was meant to be a humorous stunt, it gives a peep into just what lies ahead in the future. I can almost definitely ask myself - so is this it? Are we gradually coming to a time that we will have AI Robots as friends, fall in love with them, get married and probably, oh no, I had rather just hold my thoughts...

But each time I remember my brother's words, I can't help but think that though these robots may fulfill the part of partners to us, they can never become the other parts of us.

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References

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604097/robotics-smart-materials-and-their-future-impact-for-humans/

https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/robots/pepper/find-out-more-about-pepper

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/02/17/the-dark-heart-of-human-robot-companionship/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4363960/samantha-sex-robot-seduce-doll/

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