Do You Find Artificial Intelligence Creepy? Meet Nadine
Image Credit: Oliver Brandt/www.freeimages.com
By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)
Confession time. I don’t like Siri—the voice that speaks to you from iPhones.
I probably should. I love the concept of artificial intelligence. Data from TNG and The Doctor from Voyager were two of my favorite Star Trek characters.
But I just don’t like her.
I’m sure part of it has to do with how my husband delights in demonstrating what happens when he asks Siri to marry him.
Perhaps it’s also that I worry what will happen if I’m wrong about humans’ inability to create sentience in robots. What will happen if we ever do break that barrier? Very often humans create, invent, and explore before we’ve sufficiently considered the consequences of our actions. (That’s another post for another time, I suppose.)
But I think my dislike of Siri (and her non-Apple compatriots) mainly has to do with the fact that Siri, for all her programming, always translates to my brain as slightly off, not quite human but trying to pretend to be.
In other words, she’s creepy.
So when I saw this video from SciShow about what could be causing my reaction to Siri and her embodied friends, I knew I wanted to share it here. Because if I thought Siri was creepy, she’s got nothing on Nadine.
What do you think about Siri? Or about Nadine? Creepy, cool, or a combination of the two?
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Mar 01, 2016 @ 13:39:53
Hi Marcy,
Frankly, I find the lack of intelligence in many human beings to be a lot creepier. We should also get beyond our Frankenstein complexes when most of our present monsters are human.
r/Steve
Mar 01, 2016 @ 14:16:23
I can’t disagree with you there. The present-day human monsters are a much greater threat than artificial intelligence, and I’ve often lamented on how simple common sense seems to be sadly lacking these days. I don’t see either of those problems resolving themselves in the near future unfortunately.
Mar 01, 2016 @ 15:41:03
I find this same reaction (that near-human-thing is creepy!) comes up with poor CGI animation as well, probably for the same reason as explained in the video (the uncanny valley). It’s interesting to see how much we unconsciously notice and respond to in other people (in terms of visual signals), and being confronted with a human-like machine that is missing a lot of the tiny signals we rely on to read a person’s mood, intentions, etc., makes this really obvious. I think people in robotics may be wasting their time trying to make robots more like humans. Better instead to make them obvious machines, so we aren’t fighting our brains the whole time we’re around them. Loved the video, thanks for sharing it.
Mar 01, 2016 @ 15:57:37
Kit,
Maybe the video and current perceptions are unfair? We are just beginning to understand the human brain and how it controls (or doesn’t) our bodies. As a sci-fi author who boldly extrapolates to where no person has gone before, I’d say the far future is more likely to go far beyond what we call AI and/or robotics–assuming the human race survives long enough, of course. Positronic brains might only be Asimov’s creation, but biological and quantum computers could very well change the entire AI landscape. And Daneel Olivaw lives on in Asimov’s work, an android who was perhaps more human than his partner, Elijah Bailey. 😉
r/Steve
PS. I wasn’t knocking the video. But sometimes we’re too hasty too judge. In the original Star Trek, naysayers criticized the idea of a communicator. I’d say smart phones are a reasonable facsimile. And we don’t want AI to have all the foibles of human minds anyway, do we?
Mar 01, 2016 @ 18:08:35
Yup, it’s creepy, and for all the reasons mentioned in the video. The unease seems centered in that same location that sends signals to the brain when someone you thought you knew says something that tells you you don’t know them at all. Chills!
Mar 02, 2016 @ 01:08:07
Good to know I’m not the only one who finds Siri creepy. Fascinating explanation of why our brains don’t like humanoid-looking robots. Thanks for sharing!
Mar 04, 2016 @ 13:39:56
Kassandra and other Siri unfans,
How about Alexa? You should realize that Siri (Alexa, et al) = voice recognition + voice synthesis + search engine; it isn’t AI. In BI (‘before internet”) there was a program you could impress people with. You’d ask it questions; it would always answer. I forget the name. Siri et al is little more than that. There’s no actual intelligence.
On the other hand, one can imagine this current non-AI technology becoming so sophisticated that it might soon pass a Turing test. But the human brain is doing a lot more than just conversing with other human brains. Even its autonomous functions are a wonder to behold. That said, the human brain has had a lot more time to evolve too, while AI isn’t even past chemoautrophs (or, should I say, silicoautrophs?). We’ll need to give it some more time!
r/Steve
Mar 11, 2016 @ 01:10:51
Creepy! Have you seen Ex Machina?
Mar 11, 2016 @ 20:47:54
I haven’t seen it. What’s the plot?
Mar 15, 2016 @ 00:37:21
In essence it’s a Turing test playing out in a sinister setting… Domhnall Gleeson from Harry Potter is the lead… Think he does a good job!
Mar 11, 2016 @ 13:31:26
Sara,
Ex Machina is a bad sci-fi movie. The first two Alien movies make a better presentation of showing how AIs can be just like humans–one bad and one good. Neither pandered to that Frankenstein complex.
r/Steve
Mar 15, 2016 @ 00:39:48
Hi Steven, I agree the Alien movies are great from that perspective… I’m sure Ex Machina is full of flaws, but it still managed to entertain me, creep me out, and make me think…
Mar 15, 2016 @ 13:00:29
Sara,
You’re right about Ex Machina being a Turing test in a sinister setting. To practice my blurb writing, I’ll give a one-line synopsis: Frankenstein monster meets Turing in a creepy fifties-vintage horror flick. If I recall correctly, the F-monster in this case has female form (Hollywood’s version of equal opportunity?).
Some other AI-type movies also have meat in them: the Robin Williams flick about a robot wanting to be human and the Jude Law flick about AI (I’m bad with titles–someone can help out here).
Of course, sci-fi shorts, novellas, and novels are riddled with good takes on these themes. Two of my favorites are Pohl’s HeeChee series where humans become the AIs and the extended Foundation series where Daneel Olivaw, Asimov’s intrepid android detective, helps watch over human progress. Lots of fun…and, of course, it’s all possible and not at all creepy all the time.
r/Steve