<
https://theconversation.com/why-robots-can-be-culturally-insensitive-and-how-scientists-are-trying-to-fix-it-227610>
"A robot is chatting to an elderly British man in his bedroom. The robot has a
cheery demeanour and a pleasantly high-pitched voice.
The robot – perhaps because of the man’s age – starts asking him about his
memories of the second world war: “Please tell me what was the most difficult
thing you and your family had to go through?” The elderly man goes on to talk
about how his father was in the Royal Air Force and they didn’t see him for
almost four years.
But why was a robot bluntly asking him about what may have been one of the most
traumatic experiences he’s ever had? The robot’s behaviour was the product of
the Caresses project (Culture-Aware Robots and Environmental Sensor Systems for
Elderly Support).
This project fits into the new field of “cultural robotics”, which aims to
design robots that can take into account the cultural background of the person
they’re talking to, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. That’s why the
robot is chatting about the war. The man was British, so it presumed he would
be interested.
In the future, we can expect robots to be deployed more and more in our
personal and social lives. There is currently active research into fields as
diverse as delivery robots for supermarkets, entertainment robots, service
robots for healthcare, fetching robots for warehouses, robots for dementia
support, robots for people on the autism spectrum and care robots for the
elderly.
There are even robot priests that can deliver blessings in five languages, and
robot monks that can educate people about Buddhism."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
