“I Feel There­fore I Am: Ro­bots and Avatars, Our Col­leagues and Play­mates of the Fu­ture” presented by Unknown presenters

Symposium:


Session Title:

  • SENSORIUM: Interdisciplinary Practices of Embodiment and Technology

Presentation Title:

  • I Feel There­fore I Am: Ro­bots and Avatars, Our Col­leagues and Play­mates of the Fu­ture

Presenter(s):



Venue(s):



Abstract:

  • Panel: SENSORIUM: Interdisciplinary Practices of Embodiment and Technology

    This in­no­v­a­tive pro­ject ex­plores how young peo­ple will work and play with new rep­re­sen­ta­tional forms of them­selves and oth­ers in vir­tual and phys­i­cal life in the next 10-15 years. It ex­am­ines multi-iden­tity evo­lu­tions of today’s younger gen­er­a­tions within the con­text of a world in which vir­tual and phys­i­cal spaces are in­creas­ingly blended. In one of the Robo­naut tweets, Au­gust 5th 2010, and at a re­cent Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Lunch De­bate, the di­verse group of ex­perts in­volved with Ro­bots and Avatars dis­cussed the im­pli­ca­tions of blended re­al­ity. This dis­cus­sion is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant in re­la­tion­ship to the use of sen­sory feed­back tech­nol­ogy that gives users a more height­ened and tac­tile ex­pe­ri­ence and that pro­vides new and more tan­gi­ble ways of be­hav­ing through (and with) new rep­re­sen­ta­tional forms. Com­ment­ing about the prob­lems with tra­di­tional un­der­stand­ings of ar­tif­i­cal in­tel­li­gence at the Lunch De­bate in June, Pro­fes­sor Noel Sharkey sug­gested that with ro­bots and avatars we should not be say­ing, “I think there­fore I am” but in­stead, “I feel there­fore I am”. Ac­cord­ing to re­searchers on Robo­naut, “As the pro­ject ma­tures with in­creased feed­back to the human op­er­a­tor, the Robo­naut sys­tem will ap­proach the han­dling and ma­nip­u­la­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties of a suited as­tro­naut”. With more hap­tic tech­nol­ogy that uses sen­sory feed­back to recre­ate the sense of touch, a user might wear gloves that allow them to feel ob­jects in a vir­tual world. The user could ex­am­ine the tex­ture and weight of rocks or even ex­pe­ri­ence the crunch of icy Mar­t­ian dirt. Is this an­other vivid sign that we have en­tered the dawn of the age of post-bi­o­log­i­cal in­tel­li­gence?


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