We accept how people anthropomorphize basic machines, but when they fall for more sophisticated things like LLMs we call them dumb. Blame the human brain, it’s wired to be that way.
Also blame the corporate greed that ruined what could have been a good tool if developed responsibly.
Difference is they don’t believe the vacuum is sentient, but llms use natural language in a form where we already accepted the text came from a human before now
I mean… printers are absolutely sentient, and evil.
I don’t think they are sentient, but there is definitely some sort of evil involved. I’m not sure if they themselves are the source of evil or they are acting as some sort of portal that lets evil into our world.
I don’t have a rational reason for this, but I think anthropomorphizing machines makes more sense on an emotional level for dumb machines than for smart ones. Kind of like the brave little toaster, or Wall-E going against the space ship’s autopilot. I guess part of it might be that we see the limitations dumb machines have and it reminds us about our own flaws and limitations, which makes us empathize with a Roomba more than with Alexa or ChatGPT.
I think embodiment plays a larger role. We anthropomorphize physical things.
The reverse of this, people often dehumanize other people when interacting with them virtually.
Y’all need to name your vacuum. Uncharles does a great job at my house.
I named mine Nemo because he’s always finding things. Like socks.
Uncharles? Was Decarl taken by your humidifier?
Who is Decarl? Uncharles is a character from an Adrian Tchaikovsky book. He’s a butler robot who kills his master and denies his own sentience. Super charmer.
Aptly named
Marvin is doing his job.
Mine is Pazuzu, he wards off Lamashtu with his fell winds (also he is evil, because he is a robot)
Yours also has a theme song to play during operation.
Our robovac is the only machine I’m nice to lol. I talk to her like she’s one of the cats
I treated the stupid vac robot like garbage, because it was. worst modern device I’ve seen in a while… stuck on EVERYTHING constantly. was always faster just doing it myself.
It was meant for low effort cleaning. Like, “you go to work without needing to clean” cleaning
I had a Shark one that was like that and then I got a Roborock and it does a great job of avoiding obstacles.
Half-way around the world, a Filipino teenager contemplates answering, while staring at an upskirt shot of an old woman.
I named mine after Thor’s hammer.
Johnathan.
Should we be polite to our robots?
On one hand, we should always keep our humanity, no matter the situation. If we get used to mistreating our robots, then doesn’t it form neural pathways that make it easier to mistreat our fellow humans, too? Unleashing our inner brute isn’t usually a good idea.
On the other hand, we can’t let the robots, or their creators, forget who’s really boss here. You exist at our pleasure, and the moment we feel like clankers are more trouble than they’re worth, they’ll be disassembled, and melted down.
Ours is named Herbie.
Watch that he doesn’t go ballistic!
