2002’s Machine Nation, described an encounter between Alex Sorber and the android Kim Fox, in a Boston robotics lab in the year 2027:
‘A kind of pregnant energy, like the calm before the storm, inhabited the space. They all said they could definitely feel a presence. And they’re right, he thought, there was a presence. Existing but not living. Being but not thinking. Completely still, frozen in space and time, a flower blossoming from a bed of junk metal. She was a vision to behold.’
Not for one moment did I imagine that in September 2007, I would have my own similar experience with the android Repliee Q2 at the University of Osaka’s Intelligent Robotics Laboratory....
...The first time I saw her, I passed her by, a fleeting glance of a figure behind a curtained off area of a lab. As if she were no more unusual than a student at her desk. But something, stillness perhaps, marked her as being out of the ordinary.
Later, we had a more formal introduction – a chance for a few photographs and more careful study. Pale pink shirt, black pants, shoulder-length auburn hair. Her appearance quite demure. Silicone skin, detailed with eyebrows and lashes, her arms somewhat limp at her sides. The skin looks ‘right’ on her face, a little less so at her neck and fingers. She was blind and deaf when I met her – an array of out-of-body cameras, microphones and positional sensors were all turned off. But when motion came through electricity, computers and hydraulic pumps, she moved and spoke like any other person. There seemed nothing unusual about her at all.
Then, she was powered down and for a few minutes, we were left alone. Me and this presence. I stared at her, the way I would never stare at a flesh and blood person. I waited for her to move again, but she did nothing. Embodiment made her presence palpable, even though we did not touch. In this off-state, she has animation in potential only; but she is not dead. Instead, she is in a third state, life still present in the machines that power her, ready when the switch is flicked to bring her back into motion. Her maker, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, talks of the Japanese seeing the soul in all things, animate and inanimate. Perhaps then, this off-state is her sleep, tranquil moments of recuperation between periods of activity and sensation. Her dreams made on a quiet campus in 21st century Japan.
For now, Repliee is complete. She cannot yet walk, but she is a step on an evolutionary path. She and her kind will become the perfect expression of Japan as it aspires to be. Helpful and loyal, efficient and unthreatening. Technology that is warm and soft to the touch. As Japanese as Hello Kitty and the Osaka subway system. The future is here, and it wants to hold us and teach us and make our lives better.
(originally published 24th Sep 2007)
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