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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to provoke discussion about losing sight of what is corporeally unique to ourselves via persistent appropriation of the senses by robotics & AI. Building "bodies" that can “sense” things, this field seems to claim embodied intelligence as its own. Contrasts will be made with dance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is intended to provoke discussion about how we may be in the process of losing sight of what is corporeally unique to ourselves, or the fading away of the corporeal in our human imaginary. The proposal is that this is occurring through the persistent appropriation of the senses by the field of robotics and AI. Arguably the origins of this can be traced to the work of the roboticist Rodney Brooks whose seminal papers including A Robot that Walks (1989) and Elephants Don’t Play Chess (1990) proposed the building of “robot control systems linking perception to action” and arguing for an alternative approach to AI grounded in “physical reality”. In other words, providing robots with the technical means to be reactive to their environment, giving them a “body” that could “sense” things, improving functioning through this feedback. These ideas have gained dominance in the field of robotics and AI and are now designated as the field of Embodied Intelligence. (Cangelosi et al 2015) In critiquing the implications of this development, I will refer to the work of anthropologist Lucy Suchman who, in her book Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2007), calls for a human imaginary that can tie humans and non-humans together without erasing the differences between them. I will draw on my own field studies in dance, including the artist Lisa Nelson whose work reflects how sensory skills are achieved through dedicated forms of dance practice, to suggest that the body is actually missing in the field of Embodied Intelligence.