Would you bring someone you love back from the dead as a robot?
It may sound like the premise of a particularly unsettling episode of Black Mirror, but the technology is moving closer to reality. Ultra-realistic humanoid robots are being developed with silicone skin, lifelike facial expressions, natural voices and simulated emotions.
Chinese robotics manufacturer UBTech is now taking the idea further. Its U1 Ultra can use 3D facial reconstruction and voice replication technology to recreate specific individuals. In other words, the robot could be programmed to look, speak and behave like a real person, potentially including someone who has died.
There are conceivable uses that might seem entertaining or harmless, such as interacting with a consenting celebrity or a recreation of a historical figure. Creating a robotic replica of a deceased loved one, or copying a living person without permission, takes us into far more troubling territory.
This technology could offer companionship and comfort, but it could also interfere with grief, violate personal identity and give deepfakes a physical body. These are questions society needs to confront before robotic replicas enter our homes, regardless of whether we feel ready for them.
Why Create Robot Replicas?
UBTech believes “companion robots” are a solution to the loneliness epidemic currently facing China, where 90 million adults live alone and 118 million elderly people are distanced from their families and children.
This is a real social problem, with many facing mental health problems due to isolation and lack of human contact.
Its robots are trained to be emotionally responsive, meaning they can recognize human states of mind and respond accordingly. This year, it will give away 100 units to vulnerable people taking part in a pilot project assessing their ability to provide companionship, assistance and mental health support.
This will add to evidence already gathered from other research. For example, one carried out by Israeli manufacturer Intuition Robotics reported a 95 percent reduction in loneliness.
Of course, a companion robot built for friendly chatting and checking in on a human’s state of mind is very different to one built to replicate a specific person’s face, voice and personality.
Back From The Dead?
Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Center For The Future Of Intelligence has studied what it calls the “afterlife industry” and warns there’s a real danger of “digital haunting”, where chatbots trained to mimic a deceased loved one create further mental health issues for their users.
Putting such a chatbot inside a humanoid shell that not only resembles a deceased person but shares our living space and interacts with us in day-to-day life is a step further, and potentially even more problematic.
After all, grieving often centers on accepting loss and adapting to the loss of a person. While we might find it comforting to see or hear a synthetic presence reminding us of them, there’s a risk that this type of coping mechanism could prevent us from moving on.
There’s also the question of consent. Theoretically, robots could be trained to imitate a person entirely without their involvement, using video and audio recordings as well as the digital footprints people create through their online activities.
If we’re dead, we can’t object to this. But we still have laws that restrict people’s likenesses being used in ways they haven’t given permission for, whether or not they are still with us.
As robots potentially become closer in appearance and behavior to real people, could they potentially be used for committing crimes involving identity theft, fraud and deception?
Society is currently struggling with the impact of AI-generated deepfakes, which are already often highly convincing. It’s easy to imagine that these problems will only be exacerbated if the deepfakes are no longer confined to screens, but walking among us, wearing the faces of people we know.
So What Should We Do?
Realistic humanoid robots are quickly moving beyond science fiction and becoming a real possibility. In a way, this could simply be thought of as an extension of the desire we’ve always had to recreate and preserve ourselves and each other, from painted portraits to photography, home videos and digital avatars.
However, there’s a fundamental difference due to the fact that humanoid replicas are capable of acting and influencing the world in a way that photographic or digital representations never can.
The concept of “embodied AI” is central to the robotics revolution now taking place. Putting AI in a human shell that resembles a living, or deceased, person raises many complicated ethical and philosophical questions that we haven’t had to face up to until now.
Once again, as with many of the transformational technologies that are today becoming a reality, the toughest challenges center on whether society can develop the appropriate ethical, sociological and psychological frameworks for them to operate safely.