Ask the Robotic Psychiatrist

No, not Dr. Susan Calvin. She's a fictional character who appears in a number of Isaac Asimov's works. Dr. Joanne Pransky is real, although she happily admits that she's modeled her career on the fictional Dr. Calvin. There is plenty of show biz razzle-dazzle (and humor) in Dr. Pransky's shtick -- she's been a judge on BattleBots and an engaging guest on many talk shows -- but there are hard academic underpinnings to it all, and she is as qualified as any living human being to answer your questions (one per post, please) about robot behavior and human-robot relationships. We'll send her 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions and have her answers back to you in about a week. (No hard-tech question, please. Those would go to a robotic internist or robotic orthopedist.)

Comments

Re:Honest Question

[I_Love_Pocky!]

Like hell this is off topic. I want to know if the Dr. has a favorite color. The article specifically asks for questions.

I think the quickest way to show how artificial "she" is, is to show how hard it would be to answer a question like this.

How can a machine have a preference for a quantity that has no functional advantage? A machine could decide they would rather have a car than a truck for some particular functional reason (passenger capacity for instance), but why one color over another? I can't think of a function that would calculate blue > red. You would have to attach some kind of weight to each color, and what basis could be used for that weight?

I know I have been rambling, but I think a question like this would be an excelent question to ask the Dr. I would be impressed if "she" could actually come up with an answer, and some kind of reasonable justification for that answer (like: "I like blue because it reminds me of the ocean"). I'd even be satisfied with "I like violet because it has a higher energy than most other visible colors."

Re:Eliza

[br0ck]

In double-blind studies it has be found that people could not tell the difference between the automated psychotherapists Eliza and a human therapist. The same study showed equal mental health healing rates using either therapist.

Dr. Calvin, how soon until you lose your job to Eliza?

Re:Aren't you just another shameless tech self-pub

[xaaronx]

"What a farse."

Farce, even. /nitpicking