Robots that can be too human

[Milkymagic]

Why are there robots that need to eat food because they're "hungry" or robots that need to go to bed if they're "tired?" It's funny when a series like say, Saber Marionette J, shows robots that have human tendencies. I just wonder what the heck they really do with food when it's eaten (burn it maybe?) and if they need to sleep as a result of overusage (they vent out or what?).

I think it's the result of robots that are made to be more human by lonely scientists who want a companion. If they didn't eat at the table, or go to bed, they'd just sit there and await orders. Also, I do think it's funny when there's robots that freak out on people who see them in the buff. I mean, who wants to get slapped by something as strong as The Terminator?

I'm telling you, if they have to eat, feed them Carbon Dioxide so you can save on expenses, or even ramen if that were the case. If you don't mind it, have them sleep on the couch if you can't buy another bed. And as far as high school girl behaviors, well, hopefully you didn't add too many of those...

[General Suburbia]

Japanese robots don't run on electricity, they run on magic.

[LadySage]

Actually, the anthropomorphization of robots in anime is something I've been complaining about for a long time. We can safely assume that in these series, artificial intelligence has gone a long way. However, that does not change that it is artificial, so all the affection Mahoro feels, or the attachment to life? Meh.

I've seen two series where I've really appreciated how they handled the android situation: Chobits (the manga at least) and Big O. At the end of Chobits, they basically say that all of Chii's actions are still bits of data firing off, and she will never truly love Hideki back as he loves her - just the appearance of it.

I'm very fond of Dorothy in Big O, precisely because she isn't overly humanized. She has a personality, yeah, but her motions, actions, and speech all reek of the artificial. She may look like a cute girl, but she is most definitely not human, through and through.

[Milkymagic]

I agree Sage, in most series I assume it's the advancement in technology of the times. I totally dig the human who modifies themselves into the robot (like in Ghost in the Shell), but the robot who modifies into the human? Quite different.
Chobits did the robot elements some justice, as Chi always felt like she was serving some job function. Granted, I did find the underpants episode in the Chobits anime hilarous, why else don't people show this level of comedy with robots? I seriously do think that some anime forget just what a robot entails, but I still find the time to appreciate it for the most part. My Dear Marie had me in for a loop when that series tried giving robots the ability to dream with a program, and Marie's dreams were just utterly bizarre. Mahoromatic is also one of personal favorites, the idea of a maid who battles in the vein of Casshan the Robot Hunter is quite amusing, but I also liked her timer at the end of each episode too.

[UndeadBear]

It is a real dream for some scientists to create a robot that imitates a human being perfectly. So it's not that big of a stretch to understand why there are robots that 'eat' and 'sleep'. It's to maintain the illusion of humanity.

In terms of emotions, though, I have absolutely no problem 'humanizing' robots. Ultimately, isn't love and emotions just neurons firing in the brain? How is that any different from the electronic equivalent in robots? If we had the technology to 100% duplicate the human brain with electronic circuitry, it would be the same thing.

It really boils down to your personal beliefs about how the human brain works. If you believe that we have a soul, then humanizing a robot doesn't work for you. For me, I'm on the fence about it. I am religious, but the scientific part of my mind insists that perfect robot imitations of human beings will eventually be a reality.

[Ninja Realist]

Actually, the anthropomorphization of robots in anime is something I've been complaining about for a long time. We can safely assume that in these series, artificial intelligence has gone a long way. However, that does not change that it is artificial, so all the affection Mahoro feels, or the attachment to life? Meh.

I've seen two series where I've really appreciated how they handled the android situation: Chobits (the manga at least) and Big O. At the end of Chobits, they basically say that all of Chii's actions are still bits of data firing off, and she will never truly love Hideki back as he loves her - just the appearance of it.

I'm very fond of Dorothy in Big O, precisely because she isn't overly humanized. She has a personality, yeah, but her motions, actions, and speech all reek of the artificial. She may look like a cute girl, but she is most definitely not human, through and through.

There really isn't much of a difference between humans and robots aside from the fact that one is far more complex than the other. Robots are just very rudimentary and specialized humans that don't occur naturally. Other than that they aren't more or less real or artificial than humans are. Remember that the human body is really just an extremely complex, organic (and by organic I mean carbon based) machine.

[Roark]

Chobits did the robot elements some justice, as Chi always felt like she was serving some job function. Granted, I did find the underpants episode in the Chobits anime hilarous, why else don't people show this level of comedy with robots?

Emphasis added. Other people DO show that level of comedy. The entire episode was a tribute to/stolen from Dr. Slump, where the good scientist has to go out and purchase panties for Arale-chan.

I was actually quite disappointed by the "robot vs. human" component of Chobits. They let it slide way too much, and the "She won't ever love you" part seemed to be more for the "awwwwww" sentiment than for any major philosophical point.

That said, Ghost in the Shell (movie and TV versions) do touch on the effects of a cyborg society quite a bit - including comments of "why do you still eat/drink."

The real answer is that it's a convienient plot devise. It's hard to emphasize with a character that's invulnerable, even in minor ways like "not eating." Human type characters are just easier for people to like. If you want a scientific explanation, well... all foods contain sugars, amino acids, minerals, etc. Breaking these down might conceivably be able to generate some kind of electrical power... conceivably. Robot sleep would accomplish much the same function as human sleep: a chance to archive and compress data, sort for useful information, and discard irrelevant stuff. That and 8 hours downtime in "standby" is a great time to clear RAM, do disk defragmentation, and operate at a lower power requirement so that power cells can be recharged.

That said, Bender's answer to this question is still the best:
Fry: Why do you drink so much?
Bender: Robots need alchohol to recharge our fuel cells.
Fry: And the smoking?
Bender: It makes me look cool.

[Milkymagic]

Wow, I love how much into this you guys are, I'll try to think about what you guys said and slap on a post later tomorrow as I think about all of this.

Undead Bear definitely held a good point about our brain and a robot's being quite similar in function, I'm sure with the right programming it could be like building someone no different than you and me. In fact, I think Roark even chimed in with some nice ideas about how a completely human robot could function, meaning he can write the manual when they make one. Ninja Realist got me thinking about the possibility of how we and robots definitely function the same as organisms, though humans and robots could probably at some point evolve on their own together soon enough possibly (since humans grow up while robots are left in their built state until we give them enhancements...possibly). And Roark's definitely got me thinking about checking out Dr. Slump sometime, that sounded interesting. I suppose that level of comedy is done elsewhere, I just need to find the right examples in the vast world of anime. Keep up the good work guys!

[Erigion]

It's so that the dirty otaku can dream about having a robot wife/maid/sex slave. I bet it's much easier to imagine one of the robots from an anime series as yours if there weren't pesky reminders that she's a robot.

[Apolyion]

Moe. It's because inhuman robots wouldn't make good moe-ko characters.

[C0MPL3X]

Difference between robots and men are pretty damn big. And I don't think we can come to create something as nearly as complex as men, which sets up a barrier that can not be blurred down between men and robots. I know anime and movies and books like to build imagined worlds and explore those 'what ifs' and it's all interesting, but I think it's as possible as creating a practical time machine.

Now GITS: SAC and 2nd gig is interesting because the line between humans and robots are blurred by placing artificial components inside humans (which is in my eyes, quite practical). Although Tachikomas definitely seemed more human than most humans in the series. They were funny and clever but I didn't think they were that well placed in the world of GITS.

And robots in anime are something that we always joke about. Women with on and off buttons.

[Milkymagic]

Maybe it's perversions by the author in question, or perhaps the need to fill a creative void in the anime medium, perhaps it's all superficial in its intentions. Still I'd love to see a bacon grease powered maid who battles aliens, tells me jokes, and cooks me dinner like it isn't a big deal.

Compl3x does get me thinking about where current science is at the moment, but with some "inhuman" amounts of work, there still remains the always debatable possibility. I have both GitS movies and love them, and I remember reading in the book Stray Dog of Anime that Oshii claimed he would get enhancements for himself to live longer with his aging body (that's not the exact quote, but the general idea), and I was quite intrigued to hear that. By the way, nice Angel's Egg sig, love that anime.

[7Raven7]

There really isn't much of a difference between humans and robots aside from the fact that one is far more complex than the other. Robots are just very rudimentary and specialized humans that don't occur naturally. Other than that they aren't more or less real or artificial than humans are. Remember that the human body is really just an extremely complex, organic (and by organic I mean carbon based) machine.

Well, that's if you discount the spirit or "soul" of a human, which a machine will never have.

[Roark]

Well, that's if you discount the spirit or "soul" of a human, which a machine will never have.
That's if you assume such a thing exists.

Which, you know, is a rather big assumption.

Edit:
Definitionally, yeah, you're right. A machine could never have the soul of a human, no more than a human could have the soul of, say, a Wookie. So, that really doesn't say much.

Edit II:
Then again, some humans claim to not have human souls. See: Furries.

[Devotion]

A machine could never have the soul of a human
But what if a human falls into the spring of drowned robot?

Now for a serious reply. I'm not really sure how it is where you are, but here in the U.S., it is common to categorize a work of fiction, particularly books, as scifi/fantasy rather than simply fantasy or scifi. This is partly due to the discrimination of "literature" vs. "genre fiction." That's not the sole reason. I'm taking this quotation from somebody: "If science is advanced enough, it will seem like magic." To put it in the context of scifi anime, it means that if the writers postulate a world that is far ahead of ours in science, then much of their technology will seem to us like magic. As robots are part of technology, the same would apply to robots.

Lets make the abstractions concrete. I know of two series that have robots who eat human food: Doraemon and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. In Doraemon, the title character is from the 22nd century, a time when advanced technology is placed in anachronistic objects and have effects that seem magical. It may be argued that Doraemon was made a robot--and thus a scifi story--to make it stand out from the multitude of magical helpers. Whether the motive is true or not, the work can be viewed in such a sense. It's a fantastic children's story postulating a future where robots can be programmed to act in a human manner, where the robots are powered by advanced nuclear reactors that can derive energy from any human food. This illustrates one motive behind robots who are too human: They are really made to be robots to have a scifi story.

In YKK, Alpha is, much like Doraemon, behaviorally almost indistinguishable from a human. She is more out of place than the former because the setting in YKK appears so primitive--80s rural Japan, I'd say. I don't think they ever attempted to make it clear why she eats food or needs sleep.

[Apolyion]

Well, speaking technically, food is an energy source.

Robots need energy from something. The most efficient source of energy we're able to reasonably safely use today are hydrocarbon (aka petroleum) fuels, such as gasoline. However these fuels have some nasty side effects like being toxic to humans, emitting pollution, and having a finite supply. And being relatively volatile. Batteries that can be charged from wall sockets are an option of course, or solar cells, or some combination - but current-day batteries are heavy and won't provide a lot of operating time to a complicated robot, while solar cells are too inefficient and unreliable to meet that kind of power requirement.

It thus makes sense to try to create a robot with a "stomach" that uses food to create energy. Food's relatively plentiful, reliable, and cheap as an energy source.

And it makes the robot more "user friendly" for the average person if they behave in ways that people understand.

So there are technological and design reasons to consider having robots that eat. A reason for sleeping (data storage and organization) was also mentioned.

In the end though my first answer remains the reason I think so many robots are humanoid in anime: moe.

[Milkymagic]

Man, I definitely believe that it's the author's choice out of some kind of convenience. Be it moe, making the story sci-fi, or just having the character in question stand out more. For the record I think robots could be powered by food if there was a way to make a robot absorb nutrients much like we do, so I think Apolyion is getting at something pretty interesting. I also appreciate Devotion's input on the level of input robots carry in most fiction (and it helps that I'm a fan of YKK to read into that opinion), I do think it can be classified as magical given how much they function like a human being in their societies.

Feel free to slap me if I need to know something, and thanks for the input!

[UndeadBear]

From our technologically primitive standpoint, robots are basically magic. We can't realistically describe how a robot might work because what we know of technology is so simplistic in comparison.

That said, there are several areas in robotics/computing that have already surpassed human capacity. No matter how complex the brain is, it's a matter of numbers. There are only so many neurons in the brain.

Of course, all this is based on the assumption that there is no soul which adds functions to a human being beyond biology. If we take the scientific stance and assume that biology can explain all human behavior, then I think it's a realistic hypothesis that electronics will eventually be able to mimic a human.

In any case, in Chobits, they made the distinction that robot emotion is simply an illusion. It was programmed to look like it had emotion. But from an external viewpoint, you can't tell the difference. For example, if an alien lifeform were to study emotions in humans vs chobits, they would likely conclude the only difference is electronics vs biological components. Maybe humans designed chobits, but evolution 'designed' humans.

Heh, sadly, I don't think we'll get to see such a robot in our lifetime. :(

[7Raven7]

That's if you assume such a thing exists.

Which, you know, is a rather big assumption.

Edit:
Definitionally, yeah, you're right. A machine could never have the soul of a human, no more than a human could have the soul of, say, a Wookie. So, that really doesn't say much.

Edit II:
Then again, some humans claim to not have human souls. See: Furries.


lol, I can see you put a lot of thought into this one. And yes, it would be a very big assumption or "belief" if you will that would say that humans, above any other animate object, being, or creature, has that little extra something. But it is also fairly popular that you or I contain something that could never be replicated by Sony.

Appropriately so, in the better animes with robot/android/cyborg characters they usually play on the conflict of the humaniod trying to find his or her identity especially in the "feeling" that they are lacking that little extra something. At least I would argue those examples are usually better than the ones where they play the robot as too human because it is harder for us to relate and we miss the conflict.

Of course, absolutely none of this applies to a robot's diet... :(

[Ninja Realist]

lol, I can see you put a lot of thought into this one. And yes, it would be a very big assumption or "belief" if you will that would say that humans, above any other animate object, being, or creature, has that little extra something. But it is also fairly popular that you or I contain something that could never be replicated by Sony.

It is also a fairly popular belief, in some parts of the world, that God created the Universe and that humans and monkeys have no taxonomical relation to each other; this popularity doesn't make them anymore truthful.

I have two questions for you?

What is a soul?

More importantly, if souls exists, why can't robots have them? Because they aren't produced through sexual reproduction? Because they aren't organisms?(or at least not according to our current understanding of organisms) Because they are created by humans and not by chance?(or by some sort of G-d being if that's what you believe in)

In my opinion the soul is nothing more than the system of organs (most notably the hippocampi) that control the encoding, storing and retrieval of memory. Robots encode, store, and retrieve memory as well, the only difference being that robots tend to have solid state memories while humans have liquid state memory, though robots may someday have memory systems much like ours if the technology becomes advanced enough.

[7Raven7]

Well, I was mearly trying to point out a psychological relationship and not theological theories. It is probably hard to grasp how anything exactly like a human would not, in fact, be human. And anything that is not exactly human, would appear, in some way, artificial.

A commonly refered to study is one in which babies are presented with the following two faces.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/7_Raven_7/Psychface.jpg
It is well documented that babies show preference (don't ask me how they show preference, it is probably with something like cooing or giggling) to the image on the left. Now this is only a visual example but I hope it illustrates that, even at a young age, humans are able to tell between something that is artificial from what would be considered a human "norm" and that as we get older I can only think we would be able to tell those differences at more than a visual level.

The differences brought up in this thread were things like emotions and behaviors, you could also throw into the mix the "conscience," free will, love, etc. Call it whatever you will, but in the real world humans are the only living things that deplay a lot of these traits.

Theoretically, a robot will either 1) have these traits or 2) imitate these traits. I think a series or movie or whatever is better at trying to use the later. It is easier for us to relate to the difference as I think it is a more common belief that humans are unique and nothing that is non-human can be exactly like us. Or the thought that robots are artificial therefore they will appear artificial. A series that tries too make too much of a similarity lacks a critical plot point, after all what are they trying to say that couldn't be said with regular, human characters? Why make them robots at all? This is just my opinion of course.

Now if its a theological or religious viewpoint you are looking for, such as what a soul is, I will reserve mine for another thread.

[NAAF]

I have two questions for you?

What is a soul?

More importantly, if souls exists, why can't robots have them?
Three! ;) How's about, "A soul is something robots can never have." By definition aha!

I'm used to thinking that a robot must be either conscious all of the time, or unconscious all of the time, but not conscious half of the time.

Bender: You can't tempt me.
Robot devil: Really? There's nothing you want?
Bender: Oh, I forgot you could tempt me with things I want.

Oh wait, that's just John Di Maggio forgetting.

[Milkymagic]

I better make a post before I get lost with a response!

Don't knock any teeth out guys, you still need to chew your food with those! But what about the robots and their food!? Ah, it appears there's definitely an answer to be had somewhere, an answer that tells us clearly of the possibilities that we're not even close to making such a robot, but the fact that there still remains a possiblity is indisputable.

Perhaps humans will naturally find ways to be authentically human, no doubt about it Raven, and Realist debates the soul's part to play (whether it exists or not, we could use such a made proxy for the time being). It is certainly in such convenience that a robot be made in the model of a human in many series given the audience targeted, but it is hilarous to wonder how human is human. My gripes were originally their eating habits, how they break a man's jaw when they see her naked, and of course their need to sleep in a bed. It all makes sense as to the possibility of it happening, but it is still quite a bit to take in at first. However, it can be believable, but it can also look too convenient in the same token.

Till next time!