Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
Chinese Robotics Company Accused Of Using Humans Dressed As Robots During Major Robotics Show
TwistedSifter: When attending the World Robot Conference in Beijing, people expect to see some incredible robots. Whether walking through the event or watching online, many people were amazed at the humanoid robot girls that were in action.
7 comments:
Ella S
said...
The headline of the article kind of gives the vibe of The Onion; it seems pretty ridiculous that a robotics company would have humans dress up as robots to go to a robotics show. I think it’s kind of funny and interesting that the article makes it seem like no one is sure if this was intentional deception or if the company truly just meant these women to be dressed as robots for no reason other than being part of the show. I doubt that the company meant for this to be true deception, since it would be far too easy to prove that these women were in face women and not robots, but if I just saw a photo in the news or something of the women with a headline like “company at robotics show” I would fully believe those women to be robots, and I’m not in a position to care very much to try to verify, so they would have a lot of the general public associating their company name with a really lifelike robot. Another thing that this article brings to mind for me is the sexualization of women, as the humans-dressed-as-robots are all women who are shown with traditionally attractive bodies.
This Article gives satire vibes. If i came across this article on social media I 100% would think it to be clickbait. Having humans dressed as robots is almost the opposite of what many artists fear which is having robots take over our jobs. I will give this company this piece of praise the "robots" give magor Sci Fi energy. I could definitely see androids like these in my favorite books and movies. I do wonder who has the idea to dress up girls as robots and how that somewhat wild idea made its way into the convention that is supposed to celebrate the progress robotics has made over the past years. With people playing robots it is incredibly clear that well are decades away from the humanoid robots many fear taking over the world. With so much news about how far AI has progressed and is taking over the world it is comforting to know that robots are so far from truly being able to emulate human behavior.
There's a lot going on with this article, and the situation as a whole. I do not know enough about robotics to have a strong opinion about the industry, nor do I know what the company was thinking when they did this at the event (though it doesn’t seem to be an intentionally deceitful action, more of a publicity stunt). My issue with the situation is the ethical questions women being dressed up as robots and paraded around bring up for me. Looking at the photographs from the event, the costumes are made up to feel like cartoons, with overstated proportions and the type of sexualized design one would expect from a fanservice character. These women could have been dressed up as humanoid robots that didn’t look like an overfetishized caricature of a robot, and the same effect of promoting the robotic company would have been accomplished. This fetishization of women in tech isn’t new at all, but the continued prevalence of it in the media is upsetting. Humans in costumes or robots, I wish that tech companies would step away from the ‘sex sells’ mentality and create helpful artificial intelligence machines without relying on fetish marketing to sell a product.
This is a crazy story. Nowadays, technology is becoming so advanced, that human-looking robots is a very possible concept (especially at a robotics conference). But I think this story also reflects how we can never be entirely sure what we are looking at and who/what is behind the technology we're using. Now with AI, it is even harder to tell if something is real or if it's AI generated. I personally don't like the public free use of AI for that reason. Now when I look at an image or an essay or a work, I don't know if it was done by a real human or if it came from the computer. The question of “Is this from chatGPT?” is one that comes up very often now and I find it leads to a lot of distrust, especially in educational settings. The advancement of technology is a cool thing to see, but I hate to see how it leads to a regression of knowledge and skills in actual humans.
The use of “Chinese” as clickbait in the title for robots who are claimed to eventually take over real people's jobs is very gross. After reading this for the first time I had to investigate further because I swore these were going to be like sex dolls since the article made it clear it was only women and women robots in question. Elon Musk had a similar situation of deceiving tech demos with his Optimus prime robots that were “talking” back to guests; in reality the robots had a microphone and bluetooth connection to a real person who could talk out of the robot. These tricks are often only disclosed in small print or not at all so a gray space is created on whether the robots are intentionally deceiving or not. I think this situation is just scummy because the company should’ve disclosed it so people weren’t shocked to find the truth and the people should’ve used more critical thinking skills when attending such an event.
This is pretty funny. It reminds me of the guy in the bear costume at a zoo that was viral a year or so ago. It seems backhanded enough of the company to be able to say that they were trying to pass the girls off as real robots, but who’s to say.I can see it going either way. I partly feel like the robotics industry is in a way similar to the AI field, in that it seems like it’s growing faster than it’s actually developing. That is to say, in both fields it seems like people are marketing products that don’t actually exist yet. AI still has a long, long way to go and it’s way far away from being perfect, but we already are seeing it plastered over every program, website, and app on our computers and phones. Similarly, it seems like we’re still a long way from a proficient humanoid robot, but they’re still everywhere.
This article is hilarious because it is eerily similar to an event for one of Elon Musk's companies that happened pretty recently. At this event, people were amazed at the level that these "robots" were performing at, only to later realize that it's because a 3rd party company were just operating the robots from a distance rather than the robots being autonomous like advertised. I think it is so stupid that companies for the sake of capitalism would rather lie and present something that is purposefully misleading in order to try to gain some kind of advantage over their competitors. It is all for the sake of money, rather than actually trying to push humanity forward. I think the fact that more and more companies are doing this foreshadows that these big companies don't actually care about the technology they produce and would rather just fill their pockets while trying to pull a fast one on the consumers trying to buy their products.
7 comments:
The headline of the article kind of gives the vibe of The Onion; it seems pretty ridiculous that a robotics company would have humans dress up as robots to go to a robotics show. I think it’s kind of funny and interesting that the article makes it seem like no one is sure if this was intentional deception or if the company truly just meant these women to be dressed as robots for no reason other than being part of the show. I doubt that the company meant for this to be true deception, since it would be far too easy to prove that these women were in face women and not robots, but if I just saw a photo in the news or something of the women with a headline like “company at robotics show” I would fully believe those women to be robots, and I’m not in a position to care very much to try to verify, so they would have a lot of the general public associating their company name with a really lifelike robot. Another thing that this article brings to mind for me is the sexualization of women, as the humans-dressed-as-robots are all women who are shown with traditionally attractive bodies.
This Article gives satire vibes. If i came across this article on social media I 100% would think it to be clickbait. Having humans dressed as robots is almost the opposite of what many artists fear which is having robots take over our jobs. I will give this company this piece of praise the "robots" give magor Sci Fi energy. I could definitely see androids like these in my favorite books and movies. I do wonder who has the idea to dress up girls as robots and how that somewhat wild idea made its way into the convention that is supposed to celebrate the progress robotics has made over the past years. With people playing robots it is incredibly clear that well are decades away from the humanoid robots many fear taking over the world. With so much news about how far AI has progressed and is taking over the world it is comforting to know that robots are so far from truly being able to emulate human behavior.
There's a lot going on with this article, and the situation as a whole. I do not know enough about robotics to have a strong opinion about the industry, nor do I know what the company was thinking when they did this at the event (though it doesn’t seem to be an intentionally deceitful action, more of a publicity stunt). My issue with the situation is the ethical questions women being dressed up as robots and paraded around bring up for me. Looking at the photographs from the event, the costumes are made up to feel like cartoons, with overstated proportions and the type of sexualized design one would expect from a fanservice character. These women could have been dressed up as humanoid robots that didn’t look like an overfetishized caricature of a robot, and the same effect of promoting the robotic company would have been accomplished. This fetishization of women in tech isn’t new at all, but the continued prevalence of it in the media is upsetting. Humans in costumes or robots, I wish that tech companies would step away from the ‘sex sells’ mentality and create helpful artificial intelligence machines without relying on fetish marketing to sell a product.
This is a crazy story. Nowadays, technology is becoming so advanced, that human-looking robots is a very possible concept (especially at a robotics conference). But I think this story also reflects how we can never be entirely sure what we are looking at and who/what is behind the technology we're using. Now with AI, it is even harder to tell if something is real or if it's AI generated. I personally don't like the public free use of AI for that reason. Now when I look at an image or an essay or a work, I don't know if it was done by a real human or if it came from the computer. The question of “Is this from chatGPT?” is one that comes up very often now and I find it leads to a lot of distrust, especially in educational settings. The advancement of technology is a cool thing to see, but I hate to see how it leads to a regression of knowledge and skills in actual humans.
The use of “Chinese” as clickbait in the title for robots who are claimed to eventually take over real people's jobs is very gross. After reading this for the first time I had to investigate further because I swore these were going to be like sex dolls since the article made it clear it was only women and women robots in question. Elon Musk had a similar situation of deceiving tech demos with his Optimus prime robots that were “talking” back to guests; in reality the robots had a microphone and bluetooth connection to a real person who could talk out of the robot. These tricks are often only disclosed in small print or not at all so a gray space is created on whether the robots are intentionally deceiving or not. I think this situation is just scummy because the company should’ve disclosed it so people weren’t shocked to find the truth and the people should’ve used more critical thinking skills when attending such an event.
This is pretty funny. It reminds me of the guy in the bear costume at a zoo that was viral a year or so ago. It seems backhanded enough of the company to be able to say that they were trying to pass the girls off as real robots, but who’s to say.I can see it going either way. I partly feel like the robotics industry is in a way similar to the AI field, in that it seems like it’s growing faster than it’s actually developing. That is to say, in both fields it seems like people are marketing products that don’t actually exist yet. AI still has a long, long way to go and it’s way far away from being perfect, but we already are seeing it plastered over every program, website, and app on our computers and phones. Similarly, it seems like we’re still a long way from a proficient humanoid robot, but they’re still everywhere.
This article is hilarious because it is eerily similar to an event for one of Elon Musk's companies that happened pretty recently. At this event, people were amazed at the level that these "robots" were performing at, only to later realize that it's because a 3rd party company were just operating the robots from a distance rather than the robots being autonomous like advertised. I think it is so stupid that companies for the sake of capitalism would rather lie and present something that is purposefully misleading in order to try to gain some kind of advantage over their competitors. It is all for the sake of money, rather than actually trying to push humanity forward. I think the fact that more and more companies are doing this foreshadows that these big companies don't actually care about the technology they produce and would rather just fill their pockets while trying to pull a fast one on the consumers trying to buy their products.
Post a Comment