The Stepford Buys

In The Stepford Wives, a novel with two film adaptations, men in a fictional Connecticut town have discovered how to turn their wives into submissive, overly attentive, eager to please robots.  Spoiler alert: things seem to go quite well for the men, not so much for the women who are transformed.  Given current (and presumably future) advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, could robots satisfactorily replace living beings?  Spoiler alert #2: they already have.

Take for example a robot dog named Aibo (yours for just $1,861 MSRP).  Manufactured by Sony, the upgraded version of this cute little pet surrogate is programmed to form an emotional bond with its owner, develop its own personality over time, and download new tricks from the cloud as needed.  Emotional bond?  Personality?  Can we form relationships with artificial friends?

The eponymous Turing Test challenges a human to differentiate intelligent behavior by a computer from that of a real person.  By one definition this requires a robot to operate within the Sense-Think-Act paradigm.  Successfully passing the Turning Test within this paradigm is considered by many to be the holy grail of the artificial intelligence (AI) field.  Can it be done?  Check out this video recently released by Google.

Where might we be headed?  While the paradigm referred to above is currently out of reach for most “robots,” there are plenty of alternative applications currently in use. They may be as basic as the Rumba that vacuums your house, but others already perform simple nursing tasks in a hospital.  How about in-home companions that can carry on basic conversations, perform some household tasks, and act as a personal assistant.  They’re out there.  If you don’t believe me, ask Alexa.      (by J R)