I rewatched the video demo of the Figure robot the other day that prompted a thought. The question that arose was less about robots but rather the person interacting with them. Go to the very end of the video and you see an interaction where the conversation isn’t quite finished, but the person interacting with the robot begins to walk away. In any normal interaction, this would be considered a bit rude. Not so to a robot who does not consider things in that way.
The question with any technology is not only “How does this change our world?”, but also “How does interacting with something in this way change us?” What normalizing that type of behavior will do to our other, non-automaton relationships. Whatever we want our more meaningful interactions to look like should inform our lower level interactions.
As AI and robotics gain ground, everyone should do the work to consider what it means to interact with humanlike beings on use.
Thoughts on Data, Culture, and Organizational Development
