what technology has turn into
We haven’t arrived in the Golden Age of Robotics just yet. They still scare us too much. It’s the rising sense of panic in our chests when we’re confronted by the fascinating and horrifying creations of roboticists like Dave Hanson, a former Disney Imagineer whose “Sophia” played Rock, Paper, Scissors on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Or the double, triple, quadruple takes we’ll give the $200,000 Geminoid-DK android, modeled after Danish professor Henrik Scharfe and produced by Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, creators of the extra-creepy communications robot Telenoid.
That creepy feeling is likely thanks to something called the “uncanny valley,” which Matt McCullen from Realbotix and creator of the Real Doll (the most popular brand of sex doll) describes as “the new experience of seeing something that strongly resembles a human being, but that has qualities that are obvious so you can tell it’s not a person.” Basically, people feel a certain way about things that look sufficiently like themselves, and when we realize it’s in response to something that isn’t really like us at all, it freaks us out. “There is a tendency for people to feel uncomfortable in that situation, almost as if someone was trying to fool them, or their senses tricked them into thinking that they were looking at a person,” says McCullen.
The companies producing the first wave of humanoid robots to enter our homes are tasked with some complicated responsibilities: keeping us comfortable with having robots in our lives while also keeping those robot companions doll-like enough that they don’t turn us off. Intricate planning and design goes into ensuring the dolls looking like, well, dolls. “It can be beautiful, and it can resemble a human, but it has to be immediately obvious that it’s not a human being,” says McCullen. “That can be done by stylizing some of the features.”
He compares this process to creating cartoons, where the characters have two eyes and a nose and a mouth and walk on two legs — they are obviously human — but, like his bots, cartoon characters have exaggerated features, like wide doll eyes or small button noses, that tell the brain right away that these aren’t real people. He’s found that the same uncanny valley that makes people uncomfortable around lifelike robots is largely responsible for poor reactions to animated or computer-generated characters, like Rogue One’s versions of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia. They look too real for people to treat them like they would cartoon characters in a live-action film, but not real enough for people to accept them as living beings.
Of course, stylization doesn’t guarantee we won’t still be uncomfortable. Susan Pirzchalski, chief roboticist at Realbotix, is leading the team in developing moving parts to mimic facial expressions—blinking eyes that can follow the user—and other input mechanisms that double as audio, video, and touch sensors. Combined with the Harmony Project, an AI-enabled app, and programming for the Oculus Rift, users can design the perfect doll in virtual reality, program its personality by interacting with the AI, and order hardware to match.
“Because it’s at a very natural rate, the eye movements really tend to creep people out. Especially if she turns to look at you. It looks like she’s following you—that’s the thing that gets people. It’s the eyes,” Pirzchalski says, adding that she expects this phenomenon to become even more disconcerting as they perfect tracking software that will allow the robot to actually follow and respond to movement.
But despite the creep factor, the Realbotix team isn’t worried.
“This is something that I think will pass with time,” McCullen says, “as people become more accustomed to the idea of very real-looking creations, whether they be digital or actual physical robots.” Indeed, the feelings of discomfort people have with near-reality aren’t limited to robots. The adult industry has been expanding into the virtual reality realm, driving development for new consumer electronics like the Oculus Rift. Still, virtual reality remains an unpleasant experience for many consumers, even the most tech savvy.
Angie Rowntree, founder and director of the erotic video site for women Sssh.com, described her first VR experience as less than enjoyable. First, the headset was way too big, a common experience for women and smaller-framed users. VR technology is almost exclusively made with average male physiology in mind. Second, like many women who use VR tech, it made Rowntree nauseated.
But hardware design isn’t the only way VR tends to cater to men. Most porn currently made for virtual reality headsets is first-person POV video with a man in the proverbial driver’s seat. For now, users still have to pretend to be part of the scene to feel the sensations that go along with the visuals. Technology in this area — sex toys designed to stimulate the viewer in sync with movement on the screen — is predictably focused on having a penis.
Rowntree wanted to avoid all that and took a different approach. In her first attempt at shooting 360-degree immersive VR porn, she wanted to make the experience as real as possible, without the user having to pretend something was happening to them that wasn’t. Instead of having sex with an actor on screen, viewers of Empowering Ava are silent voyeurs to the drama playing out between the characters, watching everything from right in the middle of the action.
Inside Rowntree’s creation, sound takes the place of sensation for simulating a realistic experience. “In order to feel really immersed, the sound has to match the screen. It can’t be flat and one-dimensional; it has to surround you.” Using direction and depth of the sound field, Empowering Ava attempts to drop the viewer right in the middle of an active stage, a technique that has proven popular even with web viewers who don’t own VR headsets.
Unlike traditional porn, where there are multiple cameras and a significant crew on set, each scene in Empowering Ava was an intimate experience between its stars and the viewer via the single 360-degree camera. In her post-shoot journal, star Ava Mir-Ausziehen, whose academic background is in anthropology, describes her experience as being much less like work and more like “real” sex. But she’s uncomfortable with the real/unreal dichotomy:
There are various types of productions that try to elicit an immersive, physiological experience from the viewer…[It] can be tempting to use the language of realness — “It felt so real!” But what we usually mean is “it felt like I was really there.” A terrifying horror movie is rarely close to what we experience in daily life; a hot porn isn’t necessarily one that perfectly mirrors our current sex life. What makes them feel “real” isn’t how much they mimic our real lives, but rather that we find ourselves utterly engrossed, physically connected, and emotionally engaged.
So, what’s all the hype? Mir-Ausziehen explains:
Claims of “realness,” whether in our porn, our food, or our housewives, has immense marketing cachet. When we believe that there is some pure, authentic truth to things, and that this truth is hidden or lost or bastardized, “realness” becomes quite desirable. And many people long for porn that feels relatable, because they want to see representations of their experience, their bodies, their preferences. So it’s no surprise that VR seems to incite so much intrigue and hold so much promise — it has the word “reality” right in there. But what is considered “real” and “authentic” changes over time, from person to person, from context to context — it is a nebulous and ever-shifting characteristic. VR no more guarantees “realness” than any other technology, but it certainly can have real consequences on our perception of reality.
The new “reality” that these technologies offer may be slow to arrive, but its impact on civilization is inevitable. “Humankind has dreamed about having robots or androids since forever, since the Greek times, people have been fascinated by them,” Pirzchalski says. But for all the years we’ve longed for robot companions, so have we feared them. The trope of murderous artificially intelligent robots dominates in both fiction and philosophy, as we grapple with the nature of life and our own humanity.
As we create technology in our own image, there are also many ways for it to inherit our flaws, biases, or penchant for destruction. “It’s like many things, technologically speaking. It’s not the technology, but the person’s hands in which you’re placing it that’s really important,” McCullen says. “The AI will learn like a child and will regurgitate things that are inappropriate because the user taught them to say that. But by putting a lot of limitations on that [learning], you’re eliminating a lot of the essential function of the AI.” While groups like Realbotix are dedicated to creating well-rounded products made by diverse employees, development teams are still largely left to respond when their technology is taught to be awful by the public.
As we teach our creations how to live in the real world (or attempt to digitally put ourselves in theirs), we must continue to ask ourselves: Whose reality are we reflecting?