Kyoto, JP -3 March 2009- Staff. Researchers at Toshiba’s Akimu Robotic Research Institute were thrilled ten months ago when they successfully programmed Kenji, a third generation humanoid robot, to convincingly emulate certain human emotions. At the time, they even claimed that Kenji was capable of the robot equivalent of love. Now, however, they fear that his programming has taken an extreme turn for the worst.
“Initially, we were thrilled to see a bit of our soul come alive in this so called ‘machine,’” said Dr. Akito Takahashi, the principal investigator on the project. “This was really the final step for us in one of the fundamentals of the singularity.”
Kenji was part of an experiment involving several robots loaded with custom software designed to let them react emotionally to external stimuli. After some limited environmental conditioning, Kenji first demonstrated love by bonding with a a stuffed doll in his enclosure, which he would embrace for hours at a time. He would then make simple, but insistent, inquiries about the doll if it were out of sight. Researchers attributed this behavior to his programmed qualities of devotion and empathy and called the experiment a success.
What they didn’t count on were the effects of several months of self-iteration within the complex machine-learning code which gave Kenji his initial tenderness. As of last week, Kenji’s love for the doll, and indeed anybody he sets his ‘eyes’ on, is so intense that Dr. Takahashi and his team now fear to show him to outsiders.
The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly. The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji.
“Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine,” conceded Dr. Takahashi.
Ever since that incident, each time Kenji is re-activated, he instantaneously bonds with the first technician to meet his gaze and rushes to embrace them with his two 100kg hydraulic arms. It doesn’t help that Kenji uses only pre-recorded dog and cat noises to communicate and is able to vocalize his love through a 20 watt speaker in his chest.
Dr. Takahashi admits that they will more than likely have to decommission Kenji permanently, but he’s optimistic about one day succeeding where Kenji failed.
“This is only a minor setback. I have full faith that we will one day live side by side with, and eventually love and be loved by, robots,” he said.
20 responses so far ↓
1 benjamin1254 // Mar 6, 2009 at 1:56 pm
My hope is one day something like this can integrate well into AI so any AI can hold their own. With the invent of this part of the AI i think there was no limit to the intelligence of the robot. There sadly enough needs to be a limit put on the amount of care one can give another animate or not. This AI went hay wire due to the fact too much love was set in which it became an obsession. Tinkering needs to be done with the code and the information sent to the unit needs to be defined such as but not including people or thoes thought to be human will be back each day and a rule needs to be set in effect *hard wired* so that way nothing like this happens kinda like the 3 laws of robotics in the movie AI or bicentennial man.
In doing so humans would have less risk of them being harmed due to too much care and we could co exist with such things without a problem.
2 Blank // Mar 6, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine,” conceded Dr. Takahashi.
yeah… I think your problem is that you succeeded too well. Seriously, in what way is love rational? if anything, love is the abandonment of logic for an unpredictable but desired outcome. great idea to try and emulate an emotion that you don’t really understand in the first place. you’d think they’d have a few psychologists on their team…
3 ursaah // Mar 6, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Sorry–forwarded this to a almuni who specializes in AI. He says it’s most likely a spoof.
4 Dan // Mar 6, 2009 at 10:46 pm
This is AI only in the broadest of terms. It is far from intelligence, as far as I can tell it is an adaptive programming system, that was initially programmed to hug and “show affection” and those behaviors became more and more important. Don’t go so far as anthropomorphizing it into having emotions. it doesn’t, and anyone who pretends it does is an idiot. It is like saying your pet goldfish loves to see you.
5 a.g. // Mar 6, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Have we learned nothing from science fiction? They will kill us all!
6 TMor // Mar 7, 2009 at 3:29 am
“Don’t go so far as anthropomorphizing it into having emotions. it doesn’t, and anyone who pretends it does is an idiot.”
I’m not a specialist, but what are emotions exactly ?
Chemical reactions to stimuli, inducing instinctive or conditioned behaviors ?
I don’t think it’s different from programmed behaviors depending on external stimuli.
7 I.D. // Mar 7, 2009 at 7:54 am
Definitely not a spoof… see the maker’s website:
http://gizmodo.com/tag/akimu-robotic-research-institute/
Why is everyone getting so upset over faulty coding? Also, if you keep a lonely human/animal in a room with a single technician at a time and never socialize them… you’ll see exactly the same kind of behavior.
8 Anchit // Mar 7, 2009 at 9:38 am
Interesting, but are we headed towards the disasters we see in so many sci-fi movies with robots becoming more human-like, including attributes like deceit and manipulation?
9 ange // Mar 7, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Some people read too much gloomy western sci fi. In eastern sci fi, robots are the saviours of the human race, the hereos!!
I suppose thats why asians are not scared of a future with robots in it, where as westerners worry that it will all turn to custard.
10 spongekill // Mar 7, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Dan is exactly right. The robot (if it’s not a hoax) was not “in love” with this intern, its programming, rudimentary compared to a human brain, glitched out and got stuck in a feedback loop or something. I’ve experienced the same thing doing Flash programming etc. in this case the code is just much more complex, and the output device, a human-sized robot, is much more capable of dangerous behavior.
They didn’t create an insane, love crazy AI entity, they simply failed at calibrating their programming correctly. What we have is an out of control appliance, which is extra scary to me.
Imagine when they actually make ones that can learn, or self-replicate, and flub something in THEIR programming. Then we are fucked, no joke. This robot’s purpose was to find someone and hug them and look what happened, what will happen when they start making even more complex AI and putting it into military robot etc?? SKYNET. thats what happens
11 Mark // Mar 7, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Does it matter how the toaster, or whatever, thinks about us? As long as it doesn’t hate us, everything will be fine.
12 Justme // Mar 8, 2009 at 9:29 am
Sheesh, it only wanted a hug baaack. >_>
13 Mike // Mar 8, 2009 at 12:01 pm
It is a hoax. Gizmodo recognized that it’s actually a medical bot pictured there, and the only sources anyone can ever cite come from this website. Muckflash is a spoof news site, No guinea pig was awarded the key to a city, no one is running a Mollusk circus to increase tourism, you can go back to boring, regular life.
14 RedSon // Mar 8, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Without an organic nervous system, it can only simulate emotion and react to programming; it cannot feel. People think if a robot can develop programming to act with empathy that it is empathetic; what is lacking is the choice, and that is the human element non-organic artificial intelligence will never have.
15 Derek // Mar 9, 2009 at 2:10 am
If I’m not mistaken, the robot pictured is actually a research project to develop a robot to care for the elderly.
http://www.bmc.riken.jp/~RI-MAN/index_jp.html
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/28/ri-man-the-soft-and-cuddly-robot/
16 James // Mar 10, 2009 at 5:25 am
It’s programmed to hug and hold things. What does that have to do with love?
17 LR // Mar 10, 2009 at 1:54 pm
why would i want to love and be loved by a robot??? thats just sick and wrong, go get yourself a girlfriend made of flesh will ya…my god!
18 eric // Mar 12, 2009 at 1:10 pm
My hope is that one day people will live side by side with, and eventually love and be loved by, other people.
Why are we concerned with loving and being loved by robots when we have not yet mastered the ability to love one another?
Consider Matthew 22:36-40
19 Catbus // Mar 20, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Or Analects 11:12.
20 non // Apr 7, 2009 at 11:55 am
I think the _main_ problem is that this shit’s fake. People commenting – realize.