What the tamagotchi shows us is that an artificial system does not have to be very complicated before its owners start to attribute autonomous, life-like qualities to it. It suggests that whatever other properties the intelligent robots of the future must have, they will be designed so that their owners want to take care of them.
Luc Steels, Digital Angels, 1999
Interesting how even “real” A.I. experts recognize the importance of “fake” A.I. After all, there is a very thin line between characters that are perceived to be autonomous and characters that truly are autonomous. If only in the philosophical sense that questions the very existence of that which is not perceived.
Equally interesting is the point made by Richard Evans as well (and waiting in the wings here to be elaborated upon): that it is very important to make the autonomous character lovable: if the spectator cares about the autonomous character, he or she is going to be much more inclined to perceive it as intelligent. So we were right when we designed our Little Deafmute Girl to blink cutely and look into the camera once in a while.
Here’s another inspiring quote from the conclusion of the same text:
[the robot of the future] will be far from the superintelligent, powerful, never failing robot, simply because an autonomous intelligence operating in the real world through sensors will always have to cope with limitations in its information resources. This weakness should be reflected in the robot’s design and behavior so that owners are inclined to take care of their robot and feel responsible for its behavior.
Luc Steels, Digital Angels, 1999
Posted on May 17, 2006 at 9:18 pm
[…] Even hardcore A.I. scientists have realized that the flaws of an autonomous character can generate such sympathy in the spectator that these characters are perceived as much more believable than the ones that are intellectually superior or supposedly more realistic. The key is that people care about the characters. […]