“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?
