In this odd new world that gets presented to us through TV, media and general propaganda, there appears to be a fair amount of focus on humanlike androids. The concept isn’t a new one, and has been suggested in many a movie and TV program or series. But in the last couple of decades, it’s not been so much about useful inventions, machinery, technology and convenience for humans, it seems to be more about replacing humans in a way. Or at least to try and phase out a humans need for another human, maybe. I think perhaps it is overlooked by many, just how energising it can be being around other people. Not ones demanding anything of you, or where you have any set purpose or task to perform (although having a audience with their full attention on you must be a good feeling to a point), but just people being people. Physical contact with human skin can help to produce oxytocin, a good feeling chemical in your brain, similar to showing affection to animals as well. That’s why they say a hand on a shoulder or a hug can go a long way to just help someone feel less alone and comforted.

Harlow and his study on dependency. You should look up that study if you aren’t familiar with it. It’s a heart-breaking watch, but you can read through it on wiki. A baby monkey was taken away from its mother, and given two alternatives. One, a cold hard frame of a ‘mother’ which would dispense food, and the other which had no food, but was wrapped in a terry cloth and was a softer ‘mother’ option. The surprise apparently for them, was that the baby only went to the hard framed mother when it had food, and then went straight back to the comfort of the softer one. Shocked they were. Yeah right, they would have known these things beforehand, but just wanted to see and decided from that, yes, infants feel attachment towards their care-giver and it is an attachment called love. Cruelty as its finest. That was in 1958, so makes you wonder just what they had been doing all that time within psychiatry, medicine and emotional development of people and animals to come up with that.

Anyway, from that idea I theorised that there is a detachment they are trying to cause in us, trying to fully understand attachment, which we all seem predispositioned with at birth, to be able to create the opposite. But the way they seemed to want people to view each other as potential hazards and germ factories, the carriers of death itself, and purposely encouraged shunning and abuse made me think there was a bit more to it. They wanted to see people being hostile to each other, afraid of each other, so I have given thought to why, other than the obvious of facilitating the ‘pandemic’. It also serves a purpose to make people feel more detached from their fellow humans, and if we are not getting what we need from other people, we will be needy, missing something, searching for contentment. And that is where industry steps forward with a ‘solution’, and for some people, they say they like the idea of it.

iRobot – a film about the future, where robots are fully alongside humans, part of society, but a new upgrade is coming. An integrated part of the AI system which then rages out of control. Showing us that it’s the machines we should fear, if they don’t have a human side, which luckily the lead role robot does. So, all is saved. But I still speculate in those scenarios, that they are still programmed and initially created by a person, covered in my previous article Is it really the machines we should fear? So, it always has a human influence.

M3GAN – this is a weird looking film, and has elements of the above with a malfunctioning robot and it gaining ‘awareness’, but also with a mixture of Childs Play themes, and others of possessed dolls, but this one has been designed and created for purpose, so not possessed, but sentient?

Android prostitutes – There have been various articles either hinting at, or downright expecting the future to have an array of perfectly normal relationships with a human like robot. The idea they are pushing is that they are ‘safer’ and ‘won’t hurt you’ – I suspect this is meant to be geared towards emotional hurt, because if you had watched any of the films with humanistic robots, there is a lot of physical damage and pain. So, maybe it’s a weird trade-off for some, to avoid being hurt, you therefore have to avoid being loved because the robot will never really love you, unless it is programmed to. That certainly isn’t restricted to only machinery, people do sometimes have that mechanism anyway, shielding themselves from hurt and joy, because sometimes they go hand in hand and it can be hard. But if we go down the road of living with something we expect to fill a human need, when it clearly isn’t, seems like a recipe for disaster, or at least a set up for failure and disappointment.

Humans, tv series – this was a series a while ago, I only watched the first one, because it got a bit predictable after that, but the premise was interesting. Humanistic robots as servants, helping with chores, being a nanny, assisting the family, as part of the family. They aren’t just lights and clockwork though, and become sentient, and get caught up in the human relationships and emotions.

So, from the attachment assessment above, are they trying to ‘friendly them all up’ (as they say in iRobot), to make the robots looks like us and imitate us, so that we form an attachment to them? If you started to give children a ‘choice’, they are presented with a ‘cold human’ or a ‘comforting robot’ which one will they pick? There are a number of adverts and apps aimed at loneliness, but no longer about connecting people to other people, it’s now slipping into sharing you feeling with a program. An algorithm can be your friend, and because it is programmed and has been input with the requirement and parameters of what they have decided is ‘human need’, it won’t forget your birthday, or to remind you of something. It won’t overstep the mark and take liberties, and it may even be able to work out when you are sad or happy, by your responses or lack of. So, it will seem like it fills a void that has been created by society, and you will become predictable and programmed too, so will seem that you work so well together, why did you ever need people? People creating robots, to be like people, but without humanity and then selling that back to people as a ‘human experience’. It really would be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic.

(c) K Wicks