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Will robots ever really be humanlike?

I haven't read all of this thread - I've got better things to do with m,y time.

However, I remember a lecturer in comparative psychology pointing out that a major problem lay not in avoiding anthropomorphism when dealing with animals (or in this case robots) but avoiding it when dealing with humans.
 
GlennB said:
Increasingly resembling humans? No doubt, but with limits to the usefulness of further advances.

Ever able to pass for a human? Never. For example - it might well make sense to create a robot whose pupils react the way a human's eye pupisl do to light. But then a human has a further adaptation where the retinal pigments 'bleach' in bright light but recover in darkness. There would be no point building this into a robot when much simpler mechanisms could achieve the same outcome. And what would be the point in giving a 'male' robot a prostate gland? To fool the doctor? ;)
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In Spielbergs movie A.I. Jude Law plays the part of a robot gigolo. I suspect his pupal response is to give him a more human appearance to enhance his function. Having a female robot dressed like a classic "French Maid" might be more visually pleasing even if she/it did nothing but housework. This would be much more interesting than a robot vacuum cleaner with mechanical arms.
 
MontagK505 said:
In Spielbergs movie A.I. Jude Law plays the part of a robot gigolo. I suspect his pupal response is to give him a more human appearance to enhance his function. Having a female robot dressed like a classic "French Maid" might be more visually pleasing even if she/it did nothing but housework. This would be much more interesting than a robot vacuum cleaner with mechanical arms.
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More interesting, less efficient.
 
Brian-M said:
If you could only afford to own one general-purpose intelligent robot (I'm assuming that by far the most expensive part would be the brain), you'd want one that was approximately human in form, so it could operate tools and machinery intended for humans.

A human-shaped robot should be able to drive your car, use a pair of scissors, climb a ladder to clean the gutters, use a lawnmower to mow your lawn, use your vacuum cleaner to clean your carpets....ect.

Good luck trying to get an intelligent robot-car to to clean your gutters or bring you breakfast-in-bed!

ETA: But I suppose you could have one central robot-brain in your home which wirelessly controls purpose-built non-humanoid drone robot-bodies, such as a robotic lawnmower, ect. But the cost of getting separate remote drones for each specific task might be prohibitive.

ETAA: If you were talking about robots that could pass for human instead of merely humanoid in form, I guess it would effectively be a way for people to own the equivalent of loyal slaves and servants, without coming up against laws about human slavery or having to pay wages. A lot of people might want that.
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That's just it. Why not just make slavery legal again? That's exactly what makes it creepy... it's like the people that want one are wannabe slave owners. Personally, I'd prefer that my machines did not look or think like me. Even with some major differences you've got a weird anthropomorphic effect that is just plain creepy. All the robot stories/movies out there pretty much tell us why not, I'd think.

Computers/machines are BETTER and more reliable than humans at a lot of things. Why would we want to make them more like us? We sort of suck at a lot of things that the machines do well. It makes more sense to concentrate in those areas, because that's sort of the point. Making them conscious (and likely more random/unreliable as a result) is sort of counterproductive anyway from this standpoint. Making them look like us seems to me to be pointless as well... would you like to try to breed dogs that look like humans, too?
 
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Brian-M said:
If you could only afford to own one general-purpose intelligent robot (I'm assuming that by far the most expensive part would be the brain), you'd want one that was approximately human in form, so it could operate tools and machinery intended for humans.
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Highlighted part was the assumption in Isaac Asimov's "Robot" stories, which is why almost all of his robots were human-like in shape.

The reality so far is exact opposite. Integrated chips are cheap, and get cheaper every year. The rest of the robot is not. There is a saying in robotics industry: "There is no Moore's Law for gears".
But I suppose you could have one central robot-brain in your home which wirelessly controls purpose-built non-humanoid drone robot-bodies, such as a robotic lawnmower, ect. But the cost of getting separate remote drones for each specific task might be prohibitive.
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No, the real solution is separate devices with computer brains optimized to their specific tasks. NOT a general-purpose intelligence.
 
Mark6 said:
No, the real solution is separate devices with computer brains optimized to their specific tasks. NOT a general-purpose intelligence.
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But then you end up automation-robots rather than android-robots. I believe that this thread is supposed to be about android-robots, because there's no reason you'd want automation-robots to be human-like.
 
It seems to me that it's also a matter of space, would you rather have a dozen or more specialized robots running around your house, or one that's designed to multitask and to navigate spaces and use things designed for humans by humans?
 
Brian-M said:
But then you end up automation-robots rather than android-robots. I believe that this thread is supposed to be about android-robots, because there's no reason you'd want automation-robots to be human-like.
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Well, OP asked "will robots ever really be humanlike?" My answer is "no, because there is no good reason for it."
 
rdaneel said:
It seems to me that it's also a matter of space, would you rather have a dozen or more specialized robots running around your house, or one that's designed to multitask and to navigate spaces and use things designed for humans by humans?
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Keep in mind that a specialized robot need not be large. Look at the size of Roomba.

Seriously, I think there will be a lot of immobile (or very limited mobility) robots, with great versatility otherwise. Think of the sheriff's "smart house" in the TV series "Eureka". It cleans, cooks, makes beds, organizes the owner's schedule, notifies people he has appointments with if he is late, recommends and records TV programs he might like, etc. There is no "robot cook" that would take food out of refrigerator, chop it, mix it, and put it into oven. Instead refrigerator, oven, food processor and dishwasher are all integrated into "kitchen unit". No robot maid makes beds -- instead each bed comes with clamps and rollers that starighten the sheets. (IIRC, sheriff has to take dirty sheets off the bed himself and dump them into wash/dry/fluff/fold unit.) So the entire house is a robot, but not very recognizable as such and certainly not at human intelligence -- although it can converse on a limited number of topics. Few units which are mobile, such as vacuum cleaner, are more extensions of the house than independent robots.

And mobile servant/companion robots will be built to interface easily with the immobile ones. It is a lot easier to design a drink serving robot if the glasses are always stored in a known configuration inside a dish-storage unit itself designed for automatic filling/emptying. There will be a lot of demand for such technology as population ages. If a not terribly agile robot can easily and safely take a glass out of a cupboard, than an arthritic old man could too.
 
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Mark6 said:
Well, OP asked "will robots ever really be humanlike?" My answer is "no, because there is no good reason for it."
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Just because there's no good reason for it doesn't mean that people won't do it. :)
 
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