Japanese Find Robots Less Intimidating Than People 278
bik1979 writes "The Christmas issue of economist has an interesting article on 'why the Japanese want their robots to act more like humans'. The article says how people in japan are accepting robots into their daily life, more so than accepting other people. From the article: 'What seems to set Japan apart from other countries is that few Japanese are all that worried about the effects that hordes of robots might have on its citizens. Nobody seems prepared to ask awkward questions about how it might turn out. If this bold social experiment produces lots of isolated people, there will of course be an outlet for their loneliness: they can confide in their robot pets and partners. Only in Japan could this be thought less risky than having a compassionate Filipina drop by for a chat.'"
That one droid in KOTOR.. (Score:4, Interesting)
MP3 players, portable DVD players, now robots. (Score:5, Interesting)
The japanese in particular seem to have made large strides in the field of robotics, it makes sense that they would be the first to accept them into their lives.
As for why, I think it's two factors.
1. They probably understand what robots are better than the general populace of America. People are less afraid of what they understand.
2. The "anonymous internet effect" as I call it. A robot isn't a human, it doesn't have emotions, it won't get pissed off if you insult it/don't remember its birthday/whatever.
All Hooked Up (Score:0, Interesting)
Japan is absolutely correct to view mass immigration with suspicion. Injecting a large mix of wildly divergent cultures will lead to more disorder and disharmony in the long-run. It's better to go with the slow and careful approach, allowing the dommestic and immigrant population to integrate in a manageable way. Not doing this will only lead to unecessary trouble further down the line.
The native religion of Japan, Shinto, teaches that everything has a spirit. While many poo-poo this as a backward and strange throwback to an animastic past the west shrugged off a long time ago, this view is much more practical than is often realised. Viewing everything as a spirit that exists in relation to everything else encourages the development of a much more sensitive and context aware mentality.
The long-term aim of Japans robot development programmes will be familiar to many of those who've watch the excellent Ghost In The Shell movies and television series. The struggle to develop better and more sentient robots is an extrapolation of their Shinto influenced culture, and may be regarded as an effort to inject life into the inanimate world, as well as a search for individual perfection.
-- CultureShock
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Robots can only be good for humanity (Score:5, Interesting)
A. Robots remain good and helpful.
Compare this against the current state of affairs, where humanity is segmented into fundamentalist religious factions at war with each other, rapacious and/or clueless politicians bringing in 1984, big business cartels treating the citizenry as cattle, lawyers oiling the wheels of all the "legal" malevolance, plus an underbelly of simple criminals who care not about what they do to their neighbour. Yes, robot companions will become infinitely preferable to people, on average.
B. Robots do the Skynet or War Games thing and try to exterminate or dominate us.
This would undoubtedly unite us again, much like an alien invasion would do, because it's in the nature of humanity to unite against an external threat --- it's been happening throughout the ages, against attacks on one's country. So, at least there would be a silver lining for humanity amid the War Against The Machines or equivalent, until it's over one way or another.
C. The Culture scenario from Iain M. Banks' novels, ie. machine intelligence and capability becomes so incomprehensibly greater than our own that Man and all other creatures in the galaxy become their very well looked after pets.
Banks' scenario is good whichever you look at it: either mankind is happy as a pampered pet and wishes to remain so, or else mankind absorbs the technology of AI into itself and becomes one with it in order to remain the dominant species on the planet. The latter is Ray Kurzweil's expected future, as described in The Age of Spiritual Machines.
So, I see only good from the coming of the robot, regardless of its level of machine intelligence and the goals it develops for itself, if any.
Re:Japanese lack social skills (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Japanese lack social skills (Score:3, Interesting)
And of course, that is true for any society. Also, if you're a non-Japanese - and especially if you're the kind of person that reads and comments on
I've lived here for some time now, and I find this to have no more more basis in fact here than anywhere else. After seeing supposedly always composed and polite Japanese scream, shout, argue and fight often enough, I've consigned this stereotype to just another myth. It's just like the sterotype of Americans as loud, shallow and selfish - such people certainly exist but isn't really the societal norm.
Well the article is highly biased (Score:3, Interesting)
But I think there is a far simpler reason behind the lack of immigration. Japanese companies had a pact with their workers. You work hard and we give you employment for live. While this is changing on the whole a japanese company is far more likely to stick with the expensive locals then say an american company who is always looking to reduce labor costs.
As we are seeing now with the claimed shortage in tech workers (wich has been proven again and again not to be true) western companies are always looking for an excuse to get lower wage workers in place.
Immigrants do not complain and do not demand high wages or sane hours. When even they became to expensive entire production facilities were located off-shore and now even the office work is being put in low wage nations.
Because there is nobody to do the work here? No, because it allows them to scrape another percentage of the labor costs. Fuck the longterm economy, next quarters stock price is what matters.
Japanese companies operated on a slightly different moral principle. Their workers worked themselves into an easy grave and in exchange the japanese worker was assured a job for live (strangely enough with all that hard work the japanese get older then most westeners).
The west is currently having major problems with the results of it open immigration policy, right or wrong you can hardly blame the japanese for not wanting to have race riots in their cities. And no, not just in France. They have had them in england and in holland.
Perhaps we should ask why the west is so afraid of robots instead.
Re:MP3 players, portable DVD players, now robots~ (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure about this. It seems like there's some places where diversity is good, and some where it causes big problems. Many "international" or "cosmopolitan" cities are that way because they have many people of different cultures living together (and getting along): New York City, Vancouver, Hong Kong, etc. Places like this have significant minorities of people from other cultures, but they're actually richer because of it, and don't have problems with violence between the various groups.
But then there's the places you point to, where there's significant problems. But the difference, it seems to me, is that the minority groups in those cases are 1) very large, 2) usually religious (about their language in the case of the French Canadians), and 3) very militant about their religion or cause, and unwilling to assimilate.
The French Canadians aren't really a problem like the others, I think, in that they haven't (correct me if I'm wrong) caused any violence about wanting to maintain their French identity; but they have been a bit of a pain. The other groups, OTOH, cause tons of problems.
In the case of Israel and Kosovo, I'm not going to say any side is right or wrong, because I think both sides have done terrible things, but it seems like the main problem is that in each case, there's two religious groups that don't get along (thanks to their religion). And in France, the problem is the Muslims are highly religious and the rest of the country isn't, and doesn't care much for highly visibly practiced religion.
Now if you look at those cosmopolitan cities I mentioned (and there's lots more that should probably be included in that list), I think one thing you'll see is that the different ethnic groups aren't highly religious (or they're too small so it doesn't matter), and they're usually willing to assimilate. So in my opinion, the main problem with ethnic conflict is religion. Religion is what causes people to stop using their brains, and take extremist and irrational viewpoints on things (because that, essentially, is what religion is about: believing things with no rational reason to do so). Most religions preach that non-believers are subhuman, "going to hell", or somehow not as worthy as believers. Most religions also advocate violence.
We've seen this problem with religion in many places in history: the Crusades, the expansionism of Islam, the violence of various cults (Jim Jones, David Koresh), etc. This is what happens when you brainwash people into believing ridiculous mythological superstition, instead of teaching them good ethics (get along with other people, etc.). So we shouldn't be surprised when highly religious people migrate to places where they're a sizeable minority, and then cause a lot of tension and conflict. They didn't go there with the intention of assimilating with the existing population and culture and starting a new life away from the crap that existed in their homeland; they instead brought those same problems and stupid mindsets with them. Even worse, if you have two different religions in one place (i.e. Israel), you just end up with a ticking time-bomb. There's simply no way for people to get along peacefully when religion is involved.
If Japan wants to get over their fear of foreigners and allow immigration, without worrying about the immigrants bringing a lot of problems with them, they just need to screen all the immigrants and make sure they're non-religious. When was the last time you heard of agnostics or atheists starting a war trying to convert people?