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Sweaty, Anxious Robots Are the Future
If my many years of consuming vast amounts of media have taught me anything, it’s that eventually, we’ll make robots and those robots will inevitably rise against us. Movies, television, video games and books all try to impart the same lesson, but we refuse to listen. I get it, I really do. Robots are cool. Or rather, they’re cool right up to the point where they start getting goosebumps and sweating on us in an effort to gain our trust.
Having likely never seen Terminator, read I, Robot or witnessed the near-extinction of the Quarian race at the hands of the Geth (that’s Mass Effect, for you non-gamers), teams of Roboticists are ignoring our warnings as they continue their work on creating realistic robots — or robots that behave like humans, because apparently, a robot that behaves like a robot just won’t do.
They’re trying to accomplish this by focusing on the little details, the things you might not notice when interacting with a fellow human, but it’s stuff you would almost definitely notice, even subconsciously, when interacting with a robot. Things like making eye contact, using hand gestures, or expelling air when it talks is fine with me, I wouldn’t have my robot any other way. It’s the idea that we’re now working on robots that get goosebumps when told a ghost story, which I’m honestly having trouble wrapping my mind around, that starts to weird me out.
As if that’s not creepy enough, Professor Tomoko Yonezawa is leading a research team at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan that’s currently working on a robot head that actually sweats.
You might ask, “Couldn’t a robot just state its intentions and ‘feelings’ instead of needing this subtle and complex cue system?” According to research at Georgia Tech, sometimes we actually feel uneasy when the robot explicitly states its intent before an action. It’s just… awkward.
What’s more, Yonezawa says that “sometimes we make facial expressions that are different from what’s going on in our mind.” In contrast, involuntary behaviors reveal our “true feelings,” and by giving robot these capabilities, we could feel more at ease with them, because we would be able to read their intentions.
So that’s the future, folks. You excited yet?
Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known for his role in 1993’s Jurassic Park, has passed away this week at 78 years old. In a statement shared on Neill’s Instagram page this morning, the actor’s family said that his passing was “sudden and unexpected.”
Neill had been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2022, but stated the following year that he was in remission. The family notes that he “remained cancer free” at the time of his passing.
The family statement reads, “It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney Australia. Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.
“They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
In addition to his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in the original Jurassic Park and the sequels Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Dominion, Sam Neill left an indelible mark on the horror genre with memorable roles in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, The Omen: The Final Conflict, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, and sci-fi horror favorite Event Horizon.
Sam Neill’s vast resume in film and television began in the early 1970s and also includes the films Sleeping Dogs, Enigma, The Good Wife, A Cry in the Dark, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Hostage, The Jungle Book, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, The Horse Whisperer, Bicentennial Man, Daybreakers, Escape Plan, and Thor: Ragnarok.
Sam Neill is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
Steven Spielberg said in a statement to Variety, “I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him.”
Spielberg adds, “Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”
Sam Neill in ‘Event Horizon’
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