This article was originally published in The Courier on 2nd December 2017.
HOW TO BUILD A ROBOT: Wednesday, Channel 4
EMPLOYABLE ME: Monday, BBC Two
One of the most disappointing aspects of modern life is the continuing absence of lifelike robots. It's 2017, shouldn't we have caught up with science-fiction by now?
Robots
do exist, of course. They’ve become increasingly useful in the worlds of
surgery, manufacturing and agriculture. But whenever they’re designed to
resemble humans, they always fall prey to the notorious uncanny valley effect.
That is, they look blankly unnerving and sinister. They freak us out (dude).
Not
only that, we just don’t trust these sophisticated vessels of artificial
intelligence, especially now that they’ve started taking our jobs. UKIP must
detest them.
In
HOW TO BUILD A ROBOT, inventor and
puppeteer David McGoran embarked upon a mission to conquer these suspicions. He
believes, quite rightly, that humans won’t fully embrace robots until they move
and react just like us. He also believes he’s on the verge of creating that
very thing: a robot we can relate to on an emotional level.
McGoran
recently assembled a bohemian cabal of dancers, artists and engineers to help
him create a robot that the general public can fall in love with. A sensitive
soul with a poetic turn of phrase, he realised that human beings tend to respond
positively to cute, malleable creatures. That’s why very few of us form
meaningful relationships with kitchen appliances.
Following
a series of false starts and crude prototypes, the team eventually designed a
cuddly little Teletubby capable of interacting with people under its own painstakingly
pre-programmed steam. This real-life Pixar character was then left on the
streets of Bristol to discover the complexities of human intimacy. The results
were heart-warming.
People
actually responded to him, they picked him up and revealed simple truths about
themselves. The experiment succeeded on both a technical and – yes – spiritual
level.
By
creating a tactile robot capable of relatively realistic interaction, McGoran
may have disproved the notion that every human being is unique. After all,
aren’t we all pre-programmed to carry out basic physical and emotional
functions? The vast majority of us navigate our way through society in
essentially the same way.
That
may sound like a cold, cynical conclusion, but McGoran’s findings were actually
quite uplifting. Autonomous robots could remind us that, despite our apparent
differences, we’re all equal. We all belong to the same species. We’re all
human.
David
Tennant narrated this quietly profound documentary with exactly the same wryly
emphatic inflections he used in Twenty
Twelve and W1A, thus making it
feel like a spoof at times. Thankfully, much like McGoran’s friendly robot, it
was real.
My
fluctuating faith in human nature was further restored by EMPLOYABLE ME, the valuable documentary series in which disabled
job-seekers challenge the notion that employers welcome them without
discrimination.
The
latest series introduced us to Ryan and Andy. Ryan has a severe case of
Tourette’s Syndrome. Until his stroke, Andy was the director of a massively
successful business. They’d both suffered through hundreds of failed job
applications.
Assisted
by a specialist job-seeking project overseen by a psychologist, Ryan and Andy
eventually found gainful employment. Ryan, a fish fanatic, was hired by an
aquarium centre, while Andy was employed as a motivational speaker.
Without
a trace of condescending sentiment, Employable
Me empowers disabled people while combating casual prejudice.
Television,
folks, it can sometimes be a force for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment