5 robots that are getting close to real people
In “Morgan”, an artificial human is created that’s virtually indistinguishable from regular people — except that she’s slightly murderous.
It plays to this innate fear that we all have of artificial humans (biological or mechanical), which is that they’ll destroy us if they ever gain sentience.
After all, besides our intellect, humans have very few advantages over other living creatures.
That fear also extends to robots, which are physically more capable and powerful than us. Give them human intelligence and appearance, and what’s to stop them from slowly replacing humanity with tireless mechanoids that never take MC?
On the aesthetics front, we’ve already gotten quite close to a normal human. Check out these 5 robots that you might mistake for actual people.
1. Jia Jia (China)
This is Jia Jia - she’s even got double eyelids! Like most androids these days, she’s programmed to recognise facial expressions and respond to them. Not bad for something that’s made in China right? But honestly, her eyes are the creepiest part about her. She looks like she’s staring straight at you, analysing you, judging you.
Her Chinese is excellent though.
2. "Scarlett Johansson” (Hong Kong)
The Hong Kong creator of this robot, Ricky Ma, refuses to say which Hollywood actress he modelled his robot after, probably due to copyright issues. But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
The impressive part about this robot is that 70 per cent of it, er, her was 3D-printed, and he built it through trial-and-error. If even a layman can build a robot, then anyone can do it, albeit with enough money.
And if someone can write software that allows these robots to emote better than humans, then we’ll have our first real robot thespians in movies. No more dealing with crazy divas when that happens!
3. Sophia “I will destroy all humans” (America)
Although the creator meant it as a joke, it’s eerie to see how quickly Sophia agreed to destroy all humans.
Her frowns and sneers also look far more realistic than her smiles and grins, which add this tinge of anger and negativity to her.
It feels like if you piss off Sophia, she’ll unleash her vengeance on all humanity.
4. Chihira Aico (Japan)
And then we have the Japanese android Chihira, a realistic robot hostess. Oddly enough, their robotics are on par with other robots around the world.
You’d think that Japan would be the first country to master the creation of a fully autonomous android, but thankfully they haven’t infiltrated society yet.
Chihira is gentle and capable of functioning without anyone visibly controlling her, which means that she might just be the first robot to achieved the objective she was built for.
Won’t be long before someone slaps a maid costume on her, that’s for sure.
5. Erica (Japan)
And finally, also hailing from Japan, is Erica. Her eye movements are among the most realistic of the androids produced so far, because they capture the subtleties of human movement almost perfectly.
That slight twitch here, that quick blink there — it’s almost as if she feels. Her lack of mouth movements give her away though, which is fortunate because if she were to get loose, she could blend straight into the crowd.
Her make-up is pretty thick though.
Kate Mara plays Lee in “Morgan”. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Are you afraid of advances in artificial human technology now? Biologically engineered humans aren’t much better, as “Morgan” shows us. Maybe it’s just wiser for us humans not to play God, and just be content building the next iteration of the iPhone or the Playstation.
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.
