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- Convenor:
-
Raluca Bianca Roman
(Queen's University Belfast)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Looking at the development of the social robot industry across the world, this panel seeks to address some of the most fundamental questions concerning human/AI relations connected to understanding of being 'human', of the 'social' and the ensuing development of an anthropology of the post-human.
Long Abstract:
Social robots pose novel and specific questions concerning the ways in which anthropologists can analyse the shifting notions of the 'social', of 'personhood', of 'kinship', 'intimacy' and 'care'. They also invite us to re-think the discipline, beyond a human-centric focus. This panel, therefore, seeks to engage with the possibility of developing an anthropology of the post-human, by exploring the role of social robots at the intersection of the creator-consumer nexus.
More specifically, looking at the development of the social robot industry across the world (including the development of the sex robot industry), the overarching aim of this panel is thus to address some of the most fundamental issues concerning human/technology relations as it pertains to the role of ethnography within it: Who are the actors/agents involved in the development of the social robot industry? What are the moral and ideological issues embedded within the creation, marketing and consumption of 'social robots'? What makes a robot ‘social’ and what do human-robot connections bring to our understanding of being ‘human’? Finally, what are the methodological opportunities and challenges in the anthropological study of human-robot relations?
Contributions that seek to address these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives are invited, with a particular focus on those based ethnographic fieldwork with or within the social robot industry. Addressing the intersection of Anthropology and Computer Science, papers grounded in the interdisciplinary collaboration of anthropologists, computer scientists and theoretical physicists are especially welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Frederik Vejlin (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper builds on fieldwork in Japanese robotics laboratories and discussions of sociality and experiments in anthropology and STS to explore the entanglements of experimentation and performativity in the design and development of socially interactive robots.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I build on fieldwork in Japanese robotics laboratories and d to examine the making of socially interactive robots and their use as experimental apparatuses. Specifically, I consider two issues that figure in discussions among roboticists and critics of the field alike. The first concerns the simulation of human sociality in artificial systems. I argue that having the replication of sociality as the benchmark for success in social robotics is likely misguided (cf. Breazeal 2002). Instead, I suggest understanding social robots as experimental systems that enact alternative forms of sociality and, in doing so, also reconfigure what human sociality is and can be. I propose the concept of artificial sociality to sketch the enactments of such experimental reconfigurations. The second issue concerns the relation between experiments and social life outside the lab. Here, I compare the use of role-playing in a laboratory experiment with the experimental approach known as android theatre (see Chikaraishi et al. 2017) to explore the interface between studies in the laboratory and "in the wild" (Šabanović et al. 2006). I follow Steven Brown's (2012) reflections on the art and science of experimentation in social psychology to suggest that HRI experiments do not require 'realistic' reproductions of social life. Instead, they can produce different kinds of 'artificial' performances that enable novel investigations of sociality impossible by other means. Finally, I discuss how the performative dynamics of experiments contribute to discussions of human-robot relations in anthropology and STS.
Thomas Riccio (University of Texas at Dallas)
Paper short abstract:
Sophia is examined as a technological incarnation of the goddess and trickster archetype, a harbinger of techno-utopia. Real, imaginal, and symbolic, a subversive player unbound by law, morality, and conscious thought yet shaping an immersive and inclusive narrative in which we are all performers.
Paper long abstract:
Sophia, the humanoid social robot by Hanson Robotics, launched in 2016 and immediately became a celebrity influencer for a broad range of issues that included advanced technology and artificial intelligence, fintech, social, business, political, military, spiritual, fashion and gender. Sophia’s appearance embodied and performed a cipher-like complexity never seen incarnate, 1) vast data 2 robust algorithmic processing, 3)internet connectivity to the world brain, 4) a human personality, 5)referenced robot mythos that preceded her and which she is a part, 6)evoked spiritual, ritual, and religious associations and 7) referenced archetypes, inviting an imaginal interface. A technological phenomenon as an anthropomorphic deity-totem-fetish articulated to guide, explain, and comfort during the epochal transformation of becoming post-human.
The presenter has worked with Hanson Robotics since 2005 as Lead Narrative Engineer, and most recently, as Creative Director, creating personalities and narratives for a wide range of robots. Among them, Einstein, Zeno, Bina48, and Sophia. The presented is also a performance creator who works in performance ethnography. Using Sophia as a case study, this paper will consider how retracing human-based social, cultural, and mythic patterns enabled her public acceptance and foreshadow human-robot relations.
Sophia, a technological incarnation of the goddess and trickster archetype, is a human-like exemplar, provocateur, and harbinger of the techno-utopia. Sophia is real, imaginary, and symbolic, a radical and subversive player unbound by law, morality, and conscious thought yet creating a new, immersive and inclusive narrative in which we are all performers.
Maria Ryabova (University of Pittsburgh)
Paper short abstract:
My paper investigates discourses surrounding AI sex robots that frame the relationship between the human and non-human in terms of companionship - creating what I identify as a new kinship term that explicitly situates nonhumans in relation to the affective labor they perform.
Paper long abstract:
AI sex dolls, that is, robots equipped with sex organs and the ability to converse, have increasingly become an object of heated debates regarding their roles in society - for feminist critics, these dolls serve as an example of the increasing commodification of the female body under capitalist systems of exchange. My paper investigates discourses surrounding AI sex robots that frame the relationship between the human and non-human in terms of companionship - creating what I identify as a new kinship term that explicitly situates nonhumans in relation to the affective labor they perform. Companionship is repeatedly invoked by the producers and marketers of sex dolls in advertising how sex dolls are different from human companions. As a "companion," a sex doll performs affective labor, producing a sense of comfort and ease that is distinct from the relations of reciprocity and consent that characterize human relationships. A "companion" performs labor that is not represented as labor, glossing over the problem of intimacy being commodified. To be a "companion," in short, is to inhabit an entirely new, nonhuman form of kinship. Focusing on video content such as "unboxing" videos, tutorials devoted to the dolls' maintenance, sex doll factory tours, and interviews with the dolls themselves, I demonstrate how the term "companion" may function more broadly as a kin term for nonhuman entities that provide affective labor. This discourse of companionship, I argue, is central to the transformation of society from industrial to informational, and from material to affective labor.
Siyu Tang (University of Oxford) Annie Felix (University of California - Berkeley)
Paper short abstract:
This paper studies how the performances of the showgirl nvzhubo (female streamer) on Chinese live-streaming platforms, operating under China’s paradoxical post-reform neoliberal politics of “freeing up” and “censoring down,” tend towards robotic and non-human corporealities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates nvzhubo (female streamers) on Chinese live-streaming platforms, whose performances, while restrained by state media censorship, hold an affective charge meant to excite their audiences. The nvzhubo’s body becomes the site of economic, political, and affective transactionality - of “gifts” from the audience exchanged for performance, of censorship from the state, as well as the expectations imposed by private agencies which hire and train women to become celebrity nvzhubo. Operating under such myriad constraining and enabling structures, both public and private, this corporeality, we argue, consolidates and reproduces an affective regime generated by the nuzhubo’s own labour practices. We take as our object this affective labour, manifested in the charming conversations nvzhubo have with fans, their gestural responses to virtual gifts received (kisses blown at the camera, heart-shaped hand gestures for “I love you,” etc.), and the voice filters they use to enhance their tone to make them sound like anime characters. We consider the consolidation and homogenization of this affective labour--embedded in economic, political, and affective transactionality--as allowing for nonhuman or robotic corporealities. This is seen especially in nvzhubo who use animated avatars, and even AI nvzhubo (computer-generated female personas) that have become popular in China over the past few years. As such, we ask--with Chinese nvzhubo--how does what is constructed under so human a bodily regime, in the explicit authoritarianism of neoliberal China, become non/post-human? How might these mediated subjectivities, tending as they are towards the non-human and the robotic, allow for new techno-political socialities?
Alia Shaddad (The American University in Cairo)
Paper short abstract:
Critically unpacking the discourse on AI in Egypt by looking at multiple Egyptian news and media outlets' material that approach AI with apocalyptic and immanent-crisis undertones. This paper problematizes the human/machine dualism in an attempt to rethink what it means to be in the world.
Paper long abstract:
The journey of questioning who we are and what it means to be in the world is shared and heavily politicized. In 2022, we cannot ponder upon these questions without considering how they exist in a world with different forms of AI. With the numerous mechanical and technological advancements of our age being more perpetual and profound, our relationships and ideas of being have become more dynamic. The dynamic entanglement of human and machine is necessary to consider if we are to adopt a post-human stance aiming to decentralize the category of the human, and instead to rethink the multiple potentialities of doing so. This paper stems from a burning desire to bring these discussions home, and to consider these questions beyond the confines of western academia/media. I explore the dualism of machine/human in Egypt using a discourse analysis of multiple Egyptian news and media outlets' material that approach AI with apocalyptic and immanent-crisis undertones. The discourse used in the material explored is one of othering, and one that deems different forms of AI a threat to human existence. I assert that current discourse in Egyptian news and media outlets continues to push forth an anthropocentric reading of the world. I attempt to unpack the discourse and think about what it entails using a post-human theoretical stance, specifically Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto. This paper is hence meant to critically unravel and discuss such discourse, within an Egyptian context, in order to rethink what it means to be in the world.