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What Sex is Your Robot?
Ant writes "Technology Review has an article about how the more robots interact with humans, the more important their apparent gender becomes."
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My robot is an arm and hand only. And since it doesn't have fingernails, there is no way to tell if its a girl or boy.
Honestly, as robot builder I find this a little boring. It has little to do with robotics. You can take the same robot and give it a different costume and maybe a new voice to change it's sex... big deal.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Considering that a certain portion of the population is willing to have "sex" with a blow-up doll, it's just a matter of time before robots are marketed for the same purpose.
I'm not joking when I say that the "roboporn" industry is likely to be a significant driving force when it comes to creating cheap, lifelike robots.
Much better to have female robots. They're much more reasonable and reserved, not going berserk like the males.
Wait, what parallel universe am I talking about?? They're both crazy!! </joke>
I say, leave gender out of the equation. It's kind of creepy if you have robots lamely emulating human characteristics. Also, it's not a good idea to include gender, because it introduces complexity which we don't really need at this point. Perhaps it would be useful for recreational robots, but for robots that actually serve a purpose... No thanks.
The author of the article says that taking on genders will allow them to better interact with humans. I think it would make things more difficult, because gender is such a human construct. We have so many complex psychological issues with our fellow beings. I think it would make things much simpler if we just made perceptions of robots as they are, without intentionally engineering them to appear as a certain gender. Robots should behave like Robots. We don't really know what that is yet, but I think "behavior" of robots is a long way down the road. We're not there yet.
BTW what's the point of having a gender associated with a robot? I don't think Robots have need of those characteristics, or sex for that matter. Well, maybe Infrared port sex. Or maybe Seriel port....yeah...
Well, now that I think of it, I can think of a purpose. Marketing. So, for an assistant robot, you make it abundantly female, and of course, all the guys will want one. Then you make the "security" droid male, (Personally I think a female security robot might be more appealing, but then you've got to play on the typical Male Protector stereotype), and this will get all the females buying one. I think it's a little cheap. But, the markedroids have got to have something to keep them busy, I suppose.
OK I'm thinking about this way too much. Off to finish finals...
An important distinction to be made is that sex is not gender. Sex should be used only when referring to the biological nature of the object in question, whereas gender refers to a set of socially-constructed rules governing the objects behavior in society. To quote Everything2: "In anthropology gender is the accepted way to refer to a set of behaviors/beliefes often related to physical sex traits. You can have a gender that is different from your biological sex, if your culture premits."
It's not so much that they are illogical, but we jump to conclusions about what they are trying to communicate and conclude that they're being illogical.
You should read "men are from Mars,...". It helped me understand women better, and now I have fewer arguments with my wife.