Comments on: Artificial Intelligence: Making AI in our Images /2017/09/07/artificial-intelligence-making-ai-in-our-images/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology Fri, 08 Dec 2017 18:00:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1 By: John McCreery /2017/09/07/artificial-intelligence-making-ai-in-our-images/comment-page-1/#comment-840322 Fri, 08 Sep 2017 01:18:57 +0000 /?p=22184#comment-840322 Sally, are you aware of the work of Grant Jun Otsuki, a Canadian-Japanese anthropologist who has been studying Japanese engineers working with humanoid robots, with particular reference to what makes a robot “human”? I heard him give a fascinating talk last year that, if my memory is correct, centered on the proposition that while North American engineers tend to see humanity as something internal, which leads to a focus on software “inside” the robot, the Japanese engineers take the position that if a robot can be human if it acts like a human. Their focus is on external interaction rather than internal software.

He also described an eerie instance of a robot being programmed to do something that would ordinarily be entrusted to a human. In the wake of the Fukushima 1 nuclear disaster, a robot was programmed to enter the contaminated zone around the nuclear power plant and chant Buddhist sutras for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami that caused the disaster — a task that would normally be performed by a Buddhist priest.

Should you be interested in getting in touch with him: http://www.gjotsuki.net/

Note, however, that he has now left Tsukuba University in Japan and moved to New Zealand.

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