The back pages Q&A

摘要

So, what do you do? I'm a researcher at MIT, where I study human-machine interaction from a social, legal and ethical perspective. When humans interact with machines like robots, they often seem to develop an emotional connection. Why? We are very social creatures and we tend to subconsciously treat robots like they are alive, even though we know they are just machines. Part of this comes from our tendency to anthropomorphise, i.e. to project human traits, motivations and behaviours onto non-humans, like our pets. We do this in order to make sense of the world around us. Robots move around in our physical space in a way that seems to have agency, so we are hardwired to perceive them more like a living thing than an object. Plus, some robots are intentionally designed to look alive or mimic social cues. When a robot behaves in a way that we recognise and empathise with, we can become emotionally attached.