The creator of geminoid robots, Hiroshi Ishiguro, will give lectures at Skoltech. Direct speech: Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro about robots and cities of the future About competition with people
Career
In 1991 he defended his dissertation. Since 2003, professor at Osaka University. He heads a laboratory in which he creates robots that can coexist with people.
Awards
- Included in the list of One Hundred Living Geniuses (2007)
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Excerpt characterizing Hiroshi Ishiguro
- Take two at a time! bring the horn here! that's it. Where are you going?- Well, at once... Stop, guys!.. With a shout!
Everyone fell silent, and a quiet, velvety pleasant voice began to sing a song. At the end of the third stanza, at the same time as the end of the last sound, twenty voices cried out in unison: “Uuuu!” It's coming! Together! Pile on, kids!..” But, despite the united efforts, the fence moved little, and in the established silence one could hear heavy panting.
- Hey you, sixth company! Devils, devils! Help us... we will also come in handy.
Of the sixth company, about twenty people who were going to the village joined those dragging them; and the fence, five fathoms long and a fathom wide, bending, pressing and cutting the shoulders of the puffing soldiers, moved forward along the village street.
- Go, or what... Fall, Eka... What happened? This and that... The funny, ugly curses did not stop.
- What's wrong? – suddenly the commanding voice of a soldier was heard, running towards the carriers.
- Gentlemen are here; in the hut he himself was anal, and you, devils, devils, swearers. I'll! – the sergeant major shouted and hit the first soldier who turned up in the back with a flourish. – Can’t you be quiet?
The soldiers fell silent. The soldier who had been hit by the sergeant-major began, grunting, to wipe his face, which he had torn into blood when he stumbled upon a fence.
- Look, damn, how he fights! “My whole face was bleeding,” he said in a timid whisper when the sergeant-major left.
- Don’t you love Ali? - said a laughing voice; and, moderating the sounds of voices, the soldiers moved on. Having got out of the village, they spoke again just as loudly, peppering the conversation with the same aimless curses.
In the hut, past which the soldiers passed, the highest authorities had gathered, and over tea there was a lively conversation about the past day and the proposed maneuvers of the future. It was supposed to make a flank march to the left, cut off the viceroy and capture him.
When the soldiers brought the fence, kitchen fires were already flaring up from different sides. Firewood crackled, snow melted, and the black shadows of soldiers scurried back and forth throughout the occupied space trampled in the snow.
The head of the robotics laboratory at Osaka University, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, recently came to Moscow to speak at the TEDx Park Kultury conference “Man-2112”. Ishiguro managed to get closer to creating an interactive robot that completely copies human behavior. His robots play in the theater, talk and even give lectures. According to Ishiguro, it will be impossible to imagine life without androids in a 21st century metropolis: in the future they will be able to replace humans in almost all areas of activity. In an interview with The Village, Ishiguro explained exactly where new technologies will be used, why robots should be anthropomorphic, and how the city will change in the next decade.
ROBOTS ISHIGURO HIROSHI
ABOUT GEMINOIDS
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We won't be able to stop anymore technical development. At all stages of civilization, people have improved technology to make their lives easier. Washing dishes, cleaning - this is not human work, and it must be done by robots. We have dishwashers and washing machines now, but the human brain is best suited to interact with human beings. And even small children and old people can work with the robot. So far my project is unique, but large companies are seriously interested in my developments and, moreover, are already ready to implement these technologies in life. The first commercial application of my robots is in store windows. For example, we had one display case in Tokyo on Valentine's Day: the Geminoid F robot sat in the display window and waited for a call from her prince charming. We want to open a similar storefront in Hong Kong in the near future. |
The main goal of Osaka University Robotics Laboratory is understand people. |
ABOUT COMPETING WITH PEOPLE
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Robots will be able to do jobs that don't require humans. And I don’t only mean purely technical things, such as cleaning or working in factories - robots will be able to read news on television and teach children at school. Yes, I believe that human teachers are not needed. The teacher's task is to convey information, and the computer will do it better than man. Multimedia technologies make it possible to more successfully absorb information. And motivation also does not come from teachers, it appears in a person when communicating with friends: he wants to be better than his friends. |
Ishiguro and his geminoid clone starred in an action movie in 2009 "Surrogates" |
I am also sure that the entertainment industry will change in the future: robots, for example, will be able to act in the theater. I am convinced that they will be able to portray human emotions better than the person himself. After all, human capabilities are limited, but technological development is not. Geminoid F successfully played a small role in the theater.
Robots will even be created for sex. The Internet has become so popular because you can find porn there. 70% of searches are related to sex. People spend millions and a huge amount of time to find a partner. Moreover, I’m not sure that everyone is looking for a person who will love them. I personally don’t. So, of course, sex robots will appear. I myself do not develop such things and do not intend to, but I think there will be craftsmen.
ABOUT THE FUTURE OF CITIES
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I can’t say that everything I’m talking about will appear, but it is clear that cars will increasingly enter our lives. They will change the city: driverless transport, e-tailers, musicians, actors... How soon can this happen? To answer this question, just remember how long it took for the mobile phone to penetrate our lives. Three years maximum! The same thing happened with computers and the Internet. Just imagine, our lives have completely changed in three years. And it will be the same with robots. This is a matter of five, maximum ten years. |
Ishiguro is the author of more 300 publications and books |
What will people do? Anything, but I don’t think there will be an unemployment problem. To be honest, I don’t think about it at all. The task of a scientist is to develop technologies, and how to use them is up to society to decide; for this purpose, round tables, expert councils, etc. are held. You know, nuclear scientists gave us nuclear power plants and the nuclear bomb, but the blame for using this bomb to harm people does not lie with the scientists.
I don't model the future, I'm not God. My task is simple - to understand myself and humanity, this is what I try to do through my research. I don’t think about what the world of the future will look like, I don’t build an ideal picture so as not to be disappointed later, I just do my job, for which I get paid. In fact, no one knows what will happen there - we are just developing technology.
ABOUT OFFICIALS
It will take two or even three hundred years before a robot can become the mayor of any city. There will also be more robots in government and government agencies. You have a lot of officials, and most of them do nothing - they just take money. This needs to stop. In Japan, for example, passport control at the border is carried out automatically, but here I saw hundreds of people doing primitive mechanical work. This shouldn't happen. However, robots will not help you defeat corruption. To defeat it, you just need to kick out the corrupt officials. There is no other way - this is not a question of technology, it is a question of the development of society.
ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND EMOTIONS
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Will robots communicate with each other? In fact, my robots interact via the Internet, collaborate and exchange information. Communication with people is also possible. My robot, for example, drives |
Hiroshi Ishiguro, head of the Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, is blurring the line between human and robot. The machines he created are eerily similar to real men and women. Ishiguro admits that he is engaged in “electronic cloning” in order to better understand people.
The world learned about the Japanese engineer about ten years ago, when he presented to the public his first female android and the first exact copy of himself - the Geminoid robot. Ishiguro took his man-made double to scientific conferences and television studios, put the double on stage to lecture to students, and controlled it from behind the scenes.
Mister Professor, are you really you or a copy of yourself? - I ask first of all.
It seems that the scientist is already accustomed to such strange greetings. Instead of answering, he hands over a business card:
Here is a picture of me, and on the back is Geminoid.
The similarity is striking. Ishiguro himself adds fuel to the fire: his black clothes and the Japanese restraint, coupled with slightly mechanical movements, very convincingly creates the image of a kind of robotic man. The professor, who will soon turn fifty, even resorted to the services of plastic surgeons in order to remain longer like his eternally young counterpart. There is, of course, another option - to age it following the example of the original, but the Japanese do not want to do this, because each person has his own path and his own speed of development. Let Geminoid always remain the “ideal Ishiguro” » .
Electronic clones
Even the ancient Greeks asked the question: “Who is man?” A legend has come down to us from the Hellenes about how Plato, in response to his students’ request to define the essence of man, declared: “This is an animal on two legs without feathers.” The students did not remain in debt and brought a plucked rooster to the Academy. But great philosopher was not confused and clarified: “And with flat nails.”
From the Greeks we inherited a paradox: “On a ship, the lining is changed board by board. The question is: when does an old ship disappear and a new one appears? This riddle seems to have been specially invented for Ishiguro and his androids. The professor is striving, step by step, to the point of no return, after which we will no longer understand when we are in front of a machine and when we are a living creature.
For a lecture at Skoltech, Ishiguro prepared a presentation with a whole range of provocative topics. What does human presence mean to others and who is more real to them: a patient in a coma or his artificial copy with a trusting look, familiar intonations of voice and waving of his hands? What does beauty mean and can an android be more beautiful than a living woman? What is experience and can communication with artificial intelligence provide it?
“Modern people cannot be considered in isolation from smartphones, intensive care units, houses with central heating, cars - all these are parts of our new essence”
Interested in:
Mister Professor, would you dare to say that robots are a new stage in human evolution?
Evolution takes two paths. First, our genes change, but this is a very slow process. Secondly, we are developing technology. Modern people cannot be considered in isolation from smartphones, intensive care units, houses with central heating, cars - all these are parts of our new essence. The absence of many of these things poses a real threat to my life or yours. In interaction with the robot, we reveal our own abilities and expand our presence in the world. For example, the prototype of the android I just made was one of my friends from China, the head of a research company. This is very busy woman with a solid fortune, who could hardly now realize the dream of her youth and start a career as a pop star. But her copy looks younger, and she has every chance of success. People ask me: “What good is this to the housewife?” It’s simple: she feels involved in fame,” explains the professor.
“We talk about cordiality, emotionality as distinctive feature person. But what do we know about the emotions of the interlocutor?
Ishiguro often cites one ethical incident as an example. Woman instead deceased daughter receives a robotic copy of her and gets used to her like a child. Suddenly bandits break into the house, and the woman, in order to protect her daughter, or rather, her avatar, kills the criminal. Is this violence justified? There is no clear answer to this question.
There can be a deep connection between man and machine, explains Ishiguro. Now my robots are controlled by operators. A person sits at a monitor, the system reads information about his facial expressions and eye movements, catches brain impulses and transmits tasks to the android. During the experiments, we witnessed an amazing phenomenon: if a needle was stuck into the robot’s arm, the operator winced and pulled his own away - he had phantom pain! And when the robot was hugged by a beautiful girl, the operator watching them experienced pleasant sensations. At some point, a person ceases to feel the difference between his body and the body of an android. I sincerely say: my Geminoid is a continuation of me, and we accumulate common life experience.
Step to immortality
Early in his career, Ishiguro tried to bring cars to life. He suggested that manufacturers of household appliances give a human voice to irons and washing machines so that they fit more harmoniously into the household. Now voice-controlled devices that report on progress are commonplace, at least for the Japanese. And the restless Ishiguro released a whole legion of human-friendly androids onto the market.
For example, a hagwi is a pillow with arms and a tail, a plush toy that is an antidepressant. In one experiment, it was provided to residents of a nursing home in Denmark to improve the emotional climate. The old people were happy.
And elves are telephones that enhance the illusion of human presence.
“In my opinion, it’s more pleasant to talk not with a rectangular piece of plastic, but with a little man,” says the professor.
But the matter is not limited to the symbiosis of people and androids. Ishiguro encroaches on human exceptionalism and tries to make robots a direct analogue of Homo sapiens.
Studying androids, I understand that many of our traditional ideas about our nature are very conventional,” the scientist intrigues.
So far, Ishiguro's robots are not so perfect as to be misleading for a long time about their nature. But they succeed in shaking the belief in “human, all too human.” Once a scientist put one of his creations to work at the reception, and sat the other at a table in a restaurant, and eight out of ten unwitting participants in the experiment did not notice any catch. True, observing the somewhat constrained movements of the electronic restaurant visitor, people came up to ask how he was feeling. The faces of the androids look a little painful, as if some muscles were weakened or paralyzed, although the expression of their faces is quite natural.
Elfoid- robot phone. According to Ishiguro, the elfoid turns a conversation with a device into communication with a person.
We are talking about cordiality and emotionality as a distinctive feature of a person,” Ishiguro develops his thought. - But what do we know about the emotions of the interlocutor? One of my robots - a girl - plays in a theater for a Japanese director, and she manages to awaken in the audience the same feelings that human artists evoke. After the premiere, critics noted her soulful performance in reviews! We sat another android girl in a store window and gave her a smartphone, which she allegedly looked at. I opened a Twitter account on her behalf, and imagine, she gained a long list of followers, and men began sending her declarations of love! And I ask myself again: who is a person?
There are cases of direct substitution of specific people. In addition to the pseudo-lecturer Geminoid, a double of the famous Japanese comedian who died last year performs on stage. The audience sees their favorite artist as he was at the pinnacle of success, and applauds from the bottom of his heart. And again the question: which of the two bodies - lifeless or artificial - more fully embodies the comedian’s “I”?
If I can replace myself with a robot, then a person is not a body, says Professor Ishiguro.
The revolution is coming
I am a scientist, driven by research interests. The use of androids depends on you, on society. Just like with the Internet. Up to 60% of traffic is porn traffic, but how much? useful information We get it from the Internet!
At the lecture, the inventor will say that his robots can be used as nurses and medical staff in hospitals, information bureau employees at train stations and airports, that humanoid consultants in stores, TV presenters, and artists have already appeared.
Telenoid- a small android controlled by an operator with a minimum set of characteristics necessary to identify it as a person. The height of a four-year-old child, with conventional arms and a mermaid tail instead of legs. Vague facial features allow us to see in him both a man and a woman, and of any age. Ideally provides the effect of the presence of the interlocutor.
Geographically, Japan is isolated from European countries; we have few people to practice English pronunciation with, but robot teachers will help with this, Ishiguro is sure.
What is the process of creating a humanoid like?
We obtain the outer shell using 3D technologies, video modeling, we use silicone, glass for the eyes, real hair or wigs. Robots have teeth, a tongue - everything is as it should be. The body is a mechanical machine that operates on the principle of a pneumatic drive: the mechanisms are set in motion under the influence of compressed air. And of course, there is software stuffing. Every year I make two or three humanoids. Our team includes people with medical education, engineers, programmers...
It turns out that for now this is a piece production, not mass production. When will androids fill the streets?
I think in ten years. Almost any inhabitant of the Earth will be able to acquire a personal robot of more or less high quality. And this will happen very abruptly, in two or three years, just as at one time smartphones literally burst into our everyday life.
It seems that the professor is not exaggerating here. A joke about a child raised by a tablet is no longer a joke, and the film and media industry is doing its best to prepare our consciousness for an even more digitized reality. The number of views of a cartoon about a touching friendship between a grandmother and a robot, who is ready to remove the last battery from his chest in order to save the old woman from a heart attack, is rapidly growing on the Internet.
Don’t you think that the day will come when humanoids will list humans in the Red Book as an endangered species?
In Japan this is quite possible.
And the robots will multiply?
They will gather new members of society in factories.
Or maybe our ancestors were thrown to Earth in the form of some kind of microchip - and we are robots too?
Don't think.
When you are in a room where there are only you and robots, do you feel someone's presence?
You know, when a robot is exactly like a person, a certain barrier arises that prevents us from treating it with the same ease as inanimate object, accidentally touch him, touch him. So yes, I feel like there is someone else nearby.
You are called one of the geniuses of our time, do you know that? You are one of the fathers of the new electronic-silicon race.
I'm a simple person, honestly.
“Is he real?” - this question will become the most popular comment on the memorable photo I published on Facebook with the professor. It is possible that the androids of the future will write the crazy inventor into history as the first representative of the transitional species from Homo sapiens to Robo sapiens and will put him on a par with Copernicus, Darwin, Freud - the great exposers of human omnipotence.
Hiroshi Ishiguro is the twenty-eighth genius from the list of “One Hundred Geniuses of Our Time,” the creator of android robots, one of which is his exact external copy. Ishiguro brings ideas that were recently the stuff of science fiction to life.
But this is not the only goal of the brilliant engineer. One of the reasons for the creation of humanoid robots for Hiroshi Ishiguro, as journalists note, was his intense busyness: two works, permanent exhibitions, presentations. Indeed, young Professor Ishiguro is overly busy and needs an assistant. Why not create a robot - an exact copy of yourself, that is, a duplicate of Hiroshi Ishiguro?
Hiroshi Ishiguro did just that - in 2006 he created an android in his own image and likeness, implementing an interactive control concept in it. He named it Geminoid HI-1, and now the robot will be able to replace a professor teaching at Osaka University. Driving a car to the university along the crowded roads of the city is too tiring for any person, and for Ishiguro, who is extremely busy with ingenious projects, it is an absolute waste of time. Therefore, the professor will now be able to sit at home or in the laboratory and control Geminoid HI-1 from a distance. The robot is so similar to its creator that even attentive students will notice the “forgery” only if they carefully look at the duplicate of their professor at close range.
Another, perhaps the most basic goal of Hiroshi Ishiguro in creating a humanoid robot is to help the scientific world advance in the study of human nature, especially in such little-studied areas as the processes of cognition, communication, and perception.
Geminoid CI-1 is precisely a testing ground for studying the functioning of the cerebellum, which directly controls muscle contraction. Thus, Professor Ishiguro called his method “android science”.
The capabilities of Geminoid XI-1 are still far from the capabilities of fantastic androids, such as those in the film “The Conjecture of Pilot Pirx” based on the stories of Stanislaw Lem. But Hiroshi Ishiguro's double still looks real. He even winces just like the professor when they touch him. Those few micromovements that the robot makes: blinking, fidgeting in the chair, slightly raising its shoulder, simulating breathing, moving its legs, looking around the room, wincing - they all look extremely natural, and shock the audience with their resemblance to a brilliant engineer. But Geminoid XI-1 is still only imitating, it cannot make decisions on its own, this was not the purpose of its creation.
Hiroshi Ishiguro does not stop there. He wants to breathe life, his soul into his double. The professor is trying to add electrodes to Geminoid XI-1 that will make it possible to simulate even more human micromovements, thus creating a complete feeling of the presence of Hiroshi Ishiguro himself.
In 2009, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro created a robot girl. Perhaps this is exactly what the 19th century French writer Philippe de Lisle-Adam imagined when he described in his novel “Future Eve” an artificial woman Adali, just of the European type. The robot girl's name is Geminoid F (F apparently means Female, that is, woman). Although Geminoid F (Geminoid, emphasis on the second I) costs less than Geminoid HI-1, since it has a smaller degree of freedom, it is more natural. She smiles, looks, and talks. The Geminoids function is a kind of secretarial function - a robot girl replaces the secretary in his absence, and is controlled by a remote operator. The equipment box, which was not hidden in the previous android, is hidden in this female version - also a completely natural solution for a female image.
Researchers at the Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Strugatskys’ story “Monday Begins on Saturday,” who were also involved in creating androids - their duplicates, would probably also give the title “genius” to Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Hiroshi Ishiguro is the twenty-eighth genius from the list of “One Hundred Geniuses of Our Time,” the creator of android robots, one of which is his exact external copy. The photo shows the first android "Actroid Repliee", created with the participation of Hiroshi Ishiguro by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) and the Kokoro company. Photo: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images