Robots

Are these what come to your mind when you think of robots?

Simple right?
Robots are becoming much more than the typical nature in which you'd see them on a sci-fi movie. Robots can build cars, they can assist people who have difficulties, and they can even look just like real people. This may be the most jarring aspect of robots today for most people. An unassuming person looking in the face of a realistic robot may have an internal sense of panic. Is it real? It's just a robot. But it looks so real! This is getting very freaky. I put a lot of thought into why this is so unsettling for a lot of people (probably myself included). As the robots become more realistic looking, more human looking, the line between what's real and what's not becomes more and more blurred. Our brain does not like this. Our brain is more organized than at least I could ever be in real life, maybe that's why my room is such a mess, my brain is taking all my organizing powers. And our brain likes the categories that it made starting from very early on. A banana food, this piece of wood is not food. My brother is alive, my toy doll is not. It's kind of like that really uncomfortable feeling you get when you can't help but sit and stare at someone until you've decided on whether they are a boy or a girl. That's probably just your brain saying "hey, I'm trying to categorize you, fit into my box". So when robots have reached this so-called "uncanny valley", that almost indistinguishable appearance between a fake and a real human, I think our brain starts sizzling a bit at trying to categorize what it sees. Perhaps it would be different for children growing up as with these life-like looking robots who can make a sort of separate category for them as they are young and creating the categories for their life. It's unclear what may happen in the future of robots. What will happen when we may have to stop and think twice if someone is a real person or not?

I mean put some clothes on this robot, and could you really tell? Hmmm.