What will happen when the robots move from the factory floor or the warehouse and come much, much closer, right to where we eat and shop or even into our homes?
There have been remarkable advances in robots designed as household assistants, service industry providers, and even child and elder care aides.
What will it be like to actually interact with robots and android-type technology as a 'normal' part of day-to-day life?
Recently two one-act plays were staged at the Japan Society in New York City that attempted to shine a bit of a light on the impending closer level of interactions and relationships between humans and robots that are surely going to be a part of the not-too-distant future. (you can see some excerpts in the video embedded below, Email and RSS subscribers will need to click through)
The two plays, "Sayonara" and "I, Worker", show robots as more than just chore completing servants - in a way they are companions or even confidants of the human characters. "Sayonara" featured an android character acting as a poetry-reciting companion to a girl suffering from a terminal illness. In "I, Worker", the robot characters were household servants working in a home in which a young Japanese couple struggles with the loss of a child and the husband's unemployment.
The brief clips from the plays in the video above, and the comments from Japan Society Artistic Director Yoko Shioya shed a little bit of light upon and raise many interesting questions about the (not really that distant) future of human-robot interactions and relations.
On one hand it can be easy and less threatening I suppose to view the relationships that we might have with these kind of advanced robots similarly to how we've always thought about technology - as tools created to perform a task, for increased efficiency, and to make our work and lives easier. Just tools - but more capable.
On the other hand, and what I think these two dramatizations suggest, is the combination of advances in robot technology, capability, and soon - proximity, might lead to a deeper, more complex kind of interaction.
I am not really sure what the future holds, but it does seem to me there is a pretty significant difference in how we view a robot that solders parts together on an assembly line and one that we utilize to help care for a child or a sick or aged relative.
Brave new world my friends...
Have a Great Weekend!