Are You In Love With Your Vacuum Cleaner? Could You Be?
Our brains and the ways they're biased to respond to certain situations can really screw us up in other situations.
This line from the article says it all:
Provided with the right behavioral cues, humans will form relationships with just about anything...
It's a Maggie Koerth-Baker article from New York Times Magazine, "How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them":
Provided with the right behavioral cues, humans will form relationships with just about anything -- regardless of what it looks like. Even a stick can trigger our social promiscuity. In 2011, Ehud Sharlin, a computer scientist at the University of Calgary, ran an observational experiment to test this impulse to connect. His subjects sat alone in a room with a very simple "robot": a long, balsa-wood rectangle attached to some gears, controlled by a joystick-wielding human who, hidden from view, ran it through a series of predetermined movements. Sharlin wanted to find out how much agency humans would attribute to a stick.Some subjects tried to fight the stick, or talk it out of wanting to fight them. One woman panicked, complaining that the stick wouldn't stop pointing at her. Some tried to dance with it. The study found that a vast majority assumed the stick had its own goals and internal thought processes. They described the stick as bowing in greeting, searching for hidden items, even purring like a contented cat.
When a robot moves on its own, it exploits a fundamental social instinct that all humans have: the ability to separate things into objects (like rocks and trees) and agents (like a bug or another person). Its evolutionary importance seems self-evident; typically, kids can do this by the time they're a year old.
The distinction runs deeper than knowing something is capable of movement. "Nobody questions the motivations of a rock rolling down a hill," says Brian Scassellati, director of Yale's social robotics lab. Agents, on the other hand, have internal states that we speculate about. The ability to distinguish between agents and objects is the basis for another important human skill that scientists call "cognitive empathy" (or "theory of mind," depending on whom you ask): the ability to predict what other beings are thinking, and what they want, by watching how they move.
"We make these assumptions very quickly and naturally," Scassellati says. "And it's not new, or even limited to the world of robotics. Look at animation. They know the rules, too. A sack of flour can look sad or angry. It's all about how it moves."
While I have a much better relationship with my Dyson due to its superior performance and reliability, I would stop short of describing it as love.
Isab at October 2, 2013 9:44 AM
Sorry to be vulgar, but when I saw your headline I immediately thought about this scene from Scary Movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40rKfJw4EVU
JFP at October 2, 2013 9:57 AM
Here's another clip about vacuum "love". Inappropriate and NSFW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbeE0iI2LZg
JFP at October 2, 2013 10:03 AM
this is because we project ourselves on the world an things we see, and interpret accordingly.
EVEN our understanding of other human beings. Each of us interprets a human we see based on what we expect them to be.
The same if we form a relationship with them. That's why we are so surprised when we are wrong.
It isn't a big stretch to apply to your dog or cat or fish, or your old car.
Or your computer. Or your robot. The need that you have to interact with the object will drive your response.
Eventually a more complex robot will probably be something we have a relationship with, mostly existing in our own minds. because that is where WE are.
SwissArmyD at October 2, 2013 10:09 AM
Well, remember in 'Castaway' how you cried your eyes out when Wilson the volleyball floated away?
Pirate Jo at October 2, 2013 11:07 AM
I was going to post a link to an appropriate Queen tune here (and you know which one), but I can't open YouTube here in the office.
But Pirate Jo will like this one: Another example might be found in computer games. A Skyrim player in Sweden built a companion character to the game, a pretty young woman with a funny, quirky personality and thousands of lines of dialogue. The idea is that she'll travel with you, the player, through the game, and help you on your adventures in return for completing her quests. Yes, she's all electrons, but in an immersive game like Skyrim, it's easy to develop an attachment!
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at October 2, 2013 11:31 AM
Sorry to be vulgar,
No need for an apology. Vulgarity is appreciated around here.
Amy Alkon at October 2, 2013 12:33 PM
Old RPM Daddy,
I played many hours of Skyrim and became very attached to the dog, Barbas!
Pirate Jo at October 2, 2013 1:06 PM
What Queen tune????? All I can think of is "I want to break free".
(Just saw it on youtube- my penis ran away screaming.)
Eric at October 2, 2013 1:40 PM
This one. From A Night at the Opera, which also featured "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at October 2, 2013 4:33 PM
I might have married my Roomba, but then we moved and I can't charge it here.
NicoleK at October 3, 2013 3:49 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/10/are-you-in-love.html#comment-3954917">comment from NicoleKI might have married my Roomba, but then we moved and I can't charge it here.
That is so tragic. It won't work with a charge from a converter?
Ebay? And then buy one in Europe?
Amy Alkon
at October 3, 2013 5:40 AM
The converter blew a fuse, sadly. I could buy one here but they're like 500 bucks. Unfortunately, Switzerland has a very annoying import tax on everything coming over from abroad, so it would limit me to buying a used one from somewhere here, and its a small population...
NicoleK at October 3, 2013 8:39 AM
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