IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 52

INTERVIEW

commentary

Ramona Pringle

First Impressions
have memories...
and I think I have
consciousness."
Bina looks me
in the eye as she
speaks. She is African American,
and in her mid-fifties, with freshly
highlighted hair and a silk scarf tied
in a knot around her neck. Bina48
is talkative, witty, and opinionated.
Bina is also a robot.
But she's not like the robots
you've seen before. She's not an
over-sexualized, hyper-youthful femme
bot. She's not an armored soldier,
meant for war. She's not a plasticized featureless toy. And because
of all that, she is the closest developers have come to designing something close to a real woman.
"

I

Love, Philosophy,
and Processors:
Interview with a Robot

The science fiction narratives of the
last fifty years are now a reality -
from sex bots to war bots - what was
once fantasy has come to life. With
these robots, we're creating a new
technological species - an extension
of humanity designed in our own
image - but whose image? Who are
the designers? Whose realities and
lifestyles are influencing the design
of these new creatures, and what are
their values?
Is there space on the frontier of
technological development for the
representation of different race, gender, and sexual orientation? Is there
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2618728
Date of publication: 12 December 2016

52

R. PRINGLE

The Status Quo

The author interviews Bina48.
New York City's Upper East Side. I'd
been there for cultural events - book
readings and theatre shows - but
this time I was there for The Singularity Summit, an entirely different kind
of event. This Summit is a meeting
of minds for a group of futurists who
believe that within the next quarter
of a century artificial intelligence will
surpass human intelligence, drastically changing life, as we know it. I
was there to interview [1] the godfather of the movement, the infamous
Ray Kurzweil, a man publicly cited

such a thing as technology that transcends these markers of human identity? Are we creating machines that
mirror who we are today or are we
creating an aspirational class of who
we dream of being? When it comes to
our deep-seeded fears about the rise
of artificially intelligent (AI) beings,
who should we really be fearful of,
the robot... or the developer?

Brogrammers... and Outsiders
In the fall of 2012, I was in the lobby
of the infamous 92nd Street Y on
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DECEmber 2016



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