AIBO: Dog, toy or robot?

1. Introduction and Method

2. AIBO in a post-modern perspective

3. AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

4. Collectives and Quasi-objects

5. Further perspectives

6. Discussion

Introduction and method

post-modern perspective

• Psychological object

• One way interaction and de-coding

• Subject centred

• asymmetrical

post-human perspective

• Hybrid, companion species

• Interaction and de-coding goes both ways

• De-centralized subject

• Symmetrical

• Collectives and quasi-object

Our aim is to give a thorough and multi-layered description of

AIBO as a Artificial Companion, by approaching it from twodifferent, yet complementary theoretical positions:

AIBO in post-modern perspective

Sherry Turkle

In her studies of children’s relation to ‘intelligent’ toys, she uses the term psychological objects which is objects that are partially described in a psychological language.

Ex. from “Cyborg babies and dough-plasm”:

“[…] within few seconds, Sara “cycled through” three perspectives on her creature (as psychological being, as intentional self, as instrument of its programmer’s intentions). The speed of her alternations suggests that these perspectives are equally present for her at all times. For some purposes, she finds one or another of them more useful.”

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Three AIBO owner positions:

AIBO Perspective AIBO owner AIBO owner’s (technical)

competence

Technological artefact (toy)

Artificial companion (pet AND robot)

Embodied artificial agent (robot)

Journalists

Web-loggers

AIBO-generated blog

Low

High

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Journalists:

Low engagement:

“Training him to obey commands he was programmed to respond to grew increasingly difficult and frustrating. This is a robot and not a thick-headed terrier, and I didn't want or enjoy the challenge of training and disciplining him.” (BBC, Jon Wurtzel: Life with a robot dog)

 

Low display of technical competence:

“Even the simple task of renaming AIBO became a complex learning process, not for AIBO, but for me.” (Gadget Reviews: “Robotic Dogs can be Constant Companions”)

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Web-loggers:

High engagement and attachment

“Sony, like many companies, is used to releasing products and then upgrading to higher versions and phasing out the older ones. But you see they can't do that with Aibo. Aibo is not just another product. For many people he is a pet and won't be disregarded and certainly not for an upgrade. Spaz is a part of my family. I do have the 210. But I didn't get the 210 to replace my 111. I could never replace Spaz with anyone. […] (Mimitchi)

 High display of technical competence

“So pretty much every day after I was done playing with Spaz, I would pop out his memory stick and check it on the browser to see his progress.” (Mimitchi)

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Web-loggers (continued)

http://www.mimitchi.com/aibo/

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

AIBO-blog

High engagement

Hard to say anything about owner’s attachment to AIBO, since AIBO is the one posting on the blog and all comments are posted in third person. Owner acts as facilitator of a self-contained robot-blog.

 Technical competence

Very high on the hardware side, programming AIBO’s and other robots and computers to post on the blog regularly. But we can’t tell if the owner gives interest in the AI-software.

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

pt + roblog (robot blog):

posted on 6/8/2004 10:01:29 AM

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Anthropomorphic terms are needed to describe the non-physical aspects of AIBO

From Gadget Reviews:

“I named my AIBOs Taylor and George. Taylor, a model 210, looked more like a real dog. George, a model 220, had a more robotic look. Taylor turned out to be very outgoing, and often George seemed to be quite jealous of Taylor. Have I lost my mind? Well, you might think so, but in the end, these little dogs were unbelievably realistic.”

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

Sony description of AIBO (2001):

“AIBO acts to fulfill the desires created by its instincts. If satisfied, AIBO’s joy level will rise. If not, then it will get sad and angry. Like any living being, AIBO learns how to get what it wants […] Aibo has the capability to make its own decisions. AIBO senses the situation and surrounding of its environment and then reacts on its own free will.”

 “[…] like any human or living creature, when it’s not played or interacted with, AIBO tends to get lethargic. So, to keep your AIBO alert and happy, pay attention to it like the friend it is. You’ll both be happier!”

AIBO in a post-modern perspective

We want to complement Turkle’s theory with a post-human perspective in our study of AIBO because it is insuffient on following points:

• The post-modern perspective is subject-centered

• Hence interaction and de-coding goes only one way: from subject to object

• This leaves the intelligence of AI-toys to be pure simulation and psychological projection from the user/owner undermining the mutual relationship that Sony claims that AIBO offers

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

“ In the story of the wizard of Oz, Dorothy leaves Kansas for the fantasy world where she meets strange and hybrid creatures. In this country the differences between men, machines, animals are fuzzy. Dorothy’s new friends are a coward lion, a woodman and a robot that talks and pretend it has a brain.”

(Frédéric Kaplan)

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Phylogenesis: The genealogical history leading towards the constitution of AIBO as entertainment robot and artificial companion : Toys robots, pets and media-tools.

The specific phylogenesis: From ERS-110 to ERS 7

Treble approach in summery:

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Ontogenesis: The development of individual characteristics and “free will” in AIBO by means of the embedded software (Open R).

Treble approach in summery (continued):

”Entertainment robots are […] machines but they are built to be considered as pets or even friends. In consequence, they must be evaluated using the same experimental procedures than the one used in psychology or ethology”

(Frédéric Kaplan)

Epigenesis: The development of a relationship between AIBO and its owner through continuous embodied interactions.

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Object / subject hybrid

“AIBO is embedded with various forms of material agency […] that develops through interaction between AIBO – human/non-humans. This makes AIBO an entity that has to be viewed symmetrically in its relationship with the world”

(Jari Friis Jørgensen)

AIBO in relation to owners

AIBO owner

Object

Object, Subject Hybrid

Autonomous agent

Journalists

Web-loggers

AIBO-generated blog

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Nature/culture:

“I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in a much bigger, queer family of companion species”

(Donna Haraway)

 

“The debates in the last 150 years about whether the category “species” denotes a real biological entity or merely figures a convenient taxonomic box sound the over- and undertones. Species is about biological kind, and scientific expertise is necessary to that kind of reality.”

(Donna Haraway)

 

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Nature/culture (continued):

“There cannot be just one companion species, there have to be at least two to make one. It is in the syntax; it is in the flesh. Dogs are about the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships – co-constitutive in which non of the parts pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all. Historical specificity and contingent mutability rule all the way down, into nature and culture, into naturecultures.”

(Donna Haraway)

 AIBO:

“Artificial Companion” within the lager school of “Entertainment Robots”

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Collectives and Quasi-objects  

“Our relationships, social bonds, would be airy as clouds were there only contracts between subjects. In fact, the object […] stabilises our relationships, it slows down the time of our revolutions. […] The object, for us, makes our history slow”

(Michel Serres )

 

“It should be noted that this movement of quasi-objects is not separate from human relations: “ The relations at the group constitutes their object; the object moving in a multiplicity constructs these relations and constitutes the group. These two complementary activities are contemporaneous”

(Michel Serres in Mike Michael)

AIBO in a post-human and symmetrical perspective

Collectives and Quasi-objects (continued)

AIBO in relation to owners and/or

collective of owners

AIBO owner

Object

Object, Subject Hybrid

+Quasi object / Quasi

subject

Autonomous agent / Quasi subject

Journalists

Web-loggers

AIBO-generated blog

Further Perspectives:

East vs. west: AIBO as a product of Japanese culture:

“ It seems that at least one particular point distinguishes such kind of [robot sci-fi] stories from their equivalent in the West. In Japanese fictions, robots are systematically reintegrated in the human society. […] Around robots a network of new links is built so that none of these creatures are left alone. Integrating such machines is a positive process.”

(Frédéric Kaplan)

“Japanese people do not oppose the natural and the artificial but on the contrary very often use the artificial to return to nature”

(Frédéric Kaplan)

 

Further Perspectives: