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From Companion to Ex Machina, Hollywood is robot-obsessed. Should we be afraid? | News
Right up to this week with Companion, the warning that robots are a bad idea is an entrenched part of cinema. But just how close are we to a robot-infused society? And how accurate is Hollywood's picture of our robot future?
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The story is often the same. A kindly, helpful robot face, eager to aid anyone that asks. Then some questionable commands, perhaps the odd glowing-red eyes and humanity is taught a lesson: mess with robots or AI, and you'll regret it.Â
From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Alicia Vikander's chilling portrait of Ava in Ex Machina and right up to this week with Companion, the warning that robotic bodies and minds are a bad idea is an entrenched part of cinema. And while that negative prediction is by no means the only narrative, it's one found more and more on the big and small screen — especially as science catches up to sci-fi.Â
But just how close are we to a robot-infused society? Why would anyone ever want a robot companion when there are living, breathing people out there? And when Will Smith warned us about killer machines in I, Robot, was that really the main thing we should be worried about?
What's the point of a robo-friend?Some reasons for robots are self-evident: autonomous factory workers, crowd-control bots or even NASA's remote rovers that can perform physical labour in areas where humans couldn't or for longer than humans can work.Â
But a huge appetite and use for robots lies outside of menial tasks. Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Realbotix, says his company specializes in one of the most in-demand uses for robots: as companions or greeters. These robots, whether they're fully mobile or desk-mounted busts used primarily for conversation, use AI to facilitate personal interaction with the general public or specific individuals over a long period of time.
Companion robots like this put a premium on their ability to improve their users' emotional well-being and are overwhelmingly the types featured in current media. After Yang, Robot & Frank and the aptly named film Companion — the 2025 violent thriller about a subservient android — all base themselves on the real-life, modern-day application of these robots.
A scene from the 2012 film Robot & Frank, one of many films that show robots helping humans emotionally, instead of physically. (Park Pictures)The interest in them, Kiguel said, is obvious.
"There is a loneliness epidemic … and people in the past have turned to going on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok" he said. "What we're doing is, we're really just elevating the ability for people to have meaningful interactions with things that are computerized."
One such place where companion robots have been employed is in Canadore College in North Bay, Ont. There, research centre director Christina DeRoche helps run the Social Robot Project: a research endeavour that studies how robots can enhance the lives of seniors in assisted-living facilities. So far, she said, it's been a success.
"There's some great pictures that we've posted on social media … where older adults are dancing with them, singing with them, were playing games with them," she said.
That's despite the fact that those robots, unlike Kiguel's, don't operate through AI — they need a researcher to control them. It's a necessary concession given how early the team is in its research, but even this early stage has shown how useful they can be.Â
"Sometimes when you have a human being, you think, 'Oh my God, are they really gonna enjoy [this activity]?'" she said. "Whereas if that robot is the buffer, [they can] explore what the older adult enjoys."
Henry DeRuiter poses with an experimental companion robot as part of the Social Robots pilot project in North Bay, Ont. on Jan. 29. (David Hill/CBC News)How close are we to a robot future?In terms of an impending robot workforce, many companies — including Kiguel's — are betting big. Both Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Elon Musk of Tesla have said they believe that robots will pervade all society in a matter of decades.Â
But when you ask whether we're anywhere near to that today, the answer becomes less positive.
"A lot of things that we see online are overplaying the capabilities of robots today," Kiguel said. "There's no general-use robot today that you can buy and will come to your house and answer your door, mow your lawn and iron your clothes. It just doesn't exist. It might in five years, but today it doesn't."Â
Walter Martinez Marconi echoed that sentiment.Â
"Not close," he said, when asked how imminent a robot-dominant future is. As someone who creates and operates robots for use in film and television, he said his job is to build remote-controlled robots that are just close enough to lifelike that they can be improved through CGI and and after effects to look believable.Â
"We're not close to anything like what a CGI robot, a graphic robot does."
Film and television often show autonomous robots that are almost indistinguishable from real people and can answer and respond to questions or manoeuvre through and manipulate their environment as easily as humans do.
AI and software improvements have vastly improved how lifelike the programming behind robots can be, Martinez Marconi said. But when it comes to the physical, hardware aspects of actual androids like from Subservience or Megan, that's still the stuff of sci-fi.
From artificial skin that stretches and moves realistically, to motors able to replicate minute facial expressions and even power sources strong enough to make it all work — all those still require massive legwork to become actualized. When robots still struggle to even recognize objects — much less humans — in low-light situations, deploying fully functional androids is still "many, many decades" away.
"We are very complicated machines …. A computer camera can only handle maybe six billion pixels per second. A human can handle way more than that, immediately, instantly," he said. "So we're still kind of far away. We can make them look like us, but you can still tell that it's a robot."
WATCH | British Columbia's bubble tea-serving robot:Robot serves up bubble tea in Richmond, B.C.
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Touch screens and self-checkouts are commonplace, but how would you feel being served by a robot? Ali Pitargue stopped by Tea Industries, a bubble tea shop in Richmond that’s showing off its new android server named Toffee.Deathbots?When it comes to the near-perpetual fear exhibited in robot movies — that they somehow always lead to violence — Marconi had a flat-out response.
"What they get wrong is that they're going to take over and they're going to kill us one day," he said. "They always say that … They're not going to take over. A machine can only do what you tell it to do."
They do pose a risk, like any other technology, he said: they can be programmed to commit violence. But the cinematic fear of rogue robots or AI operating outside the boundaries of what its creators want, well that's more fiction than science, he said.
But the reason for the fear makes sense, said Julie Robillard, UBC assistant professor of neurology and co-author of Are friends electric? The benefits and risks of human-robot relationships.Â
"There's a lot of fear that these devices will be isolating and that they'll replace humans and human care," she said. "I have to say that in our research, we're not seeing that at all. In fact, we're seeing quite the opposite. We find these devices are actually really good at fostering human-to-human connection."
The lack of trust people feel toward robots is something designers are trying to work around, for example, by using "honest anthropomorphism." In doing so, engineers build in humanlike-restraints and behaviours — for example, including robotic eyes that point at what a robot sees, when that isn't actually necessary — to enhance the feeling of how ethical a device is and how safe it is to interact with.Â
"I would argue that there isn't a company out there that is claiming that their robot is going to replace humans. That's not really what we're aiming for, right?" Robillard said. "We're really aiming for devices that can help us in our day-to-day, support us the way that other assistive technologies can support us — and maybe have an added benefit of providing greater connection between people."
