"Master Domo as his name indicates, will serve as a mobile head of the household, supervising and managing the information in our homes and in our lives. He (or she or other) will be the one that helps your elderly mother walk downstairs, makes last minute dentist appointments, brings the self-cooking dinner from the stove to the dining room, takes care of your personal finances monitoring the stock market 24 hours a day, repairs networked household systems should any diagnostics indicate failure, puts garbage in the smart receptacles, and, if no one else is around, you may try to ask Master D. what your teenage daughter did last weekend while you were away." -Joanne Pransky

Publications > Robots: Our Future Information Intermediaries by Dr. Joanne Pransky May 30, 1995. Your TV wakes you at 7:00 am just as The Today Show comes on. Your eyes aren't even open and in 30 seconds you're caught up on the important world news that you missed while you slept: If Japan didn't get another earthquake. . . if Israel's still on the map. . . if another virus hasn't wiped out half of Africa. . . and most likely you'll hear the latest in the OJ Simpson trial. While still listening to TV, you eat breakfast and read your local morning newspaper. You quickly scan the headlines and the sports page. You find out what the weather is going to be like today. Get ready for work: make sure you have your beeper on and your cellular with you - God forbid you should be out of communication during the 30 minute drive to work. Once at the office, you get all the faxes that came in overnight, turn your computer on, read your e-mail, and the info-exchange workday begins. Hands on the keyboard, mouth on the phone, eyes on the screen, (preferably all three at once for the maximum infoglut), you do your best to stay on top of your industry. At home the same night, you surf the NET, read an article or two in Wired magazine, and catch a few minutes of Dateline (or any one of hundreds of channels), while trying to fall asleep. After all, you have to see what Marcia Clark wore at the OJ trial today. We are all "info-maniacs", trying to handle the information overload and manage the influx of data in our lives. Even in our most productive modes, there will always be too much information to process. How do we keep up? How do we control the flow and quality of information? One answer may be information filters to help us organize some of the inrush. Already available in today's market are several "software servants" or integrated expert computer systems that manage e-mail, handle phone calls, and read and organize your junk mail. Take Wildfire, for example. She (not "it") is an electronic intelligent assistant equipped with speech recognition to place phone calls, take messages, route calls to you wherever you are, and remind you of your appointments. She does this all in a businesslike voice although she does whisper, especially if she has to interrupt your phone conversation with another important call. This pentium-based system is the creation of Wildfire Communications, in Lexington, Massachusetts.1 Other information "agents" that act according to preset parameters, include MailBot, developed by Daxtron Laboratories of Fort Worth, Texas. MailBot categorizes and processes mail messages. It can sort and save important files, delete junk mail, and forward e-mail, all based on your personal preferences.2 General Magic, a company located in Sunnyvale, California, in conjunction with AT&T, Sony, and Motorola, is developing a personal digital assistant that will be able to shop, pick a restaurant and make dinner reservations, and order concert tickets from Ticketmaster.3 If reading through all the various newspapers and magazines is overwhelming, Individual Inc., in Burlington, Massachusetts offers a service that scans 500 news and information sources to pick articles that are pertinent for each subscriber and delivers them via fax, hard-copy, or as Internet e-mail. What separates Individual from other text-retrieval systems is a more advanced and dependable method in which word location and occurrence are used to assort documents according to their degree of pertinence. And then there were robots Wildfire and her relatives are just the beginning of the info-filter revolution. They are the precursors to robots, the next generation of the information intermediaries. At the current exponential rate that technology is increasing, it won't be long before robots enter our daily lives and provide us not only with information, but also with answers and solutions. The best assistant, naturally, is one like ourselves, a helper that thinks and acts as human-like as possible. Robotic assistants are no longer science fiction. The Ni1000 recognition accelerator chip, developed jointly by Intel, of Santa Clara, California, and Nestor, of Providence, Rhode Island, is designed to emulate the human brain. The chip, based on neural network technology, can learn on its own. The more patterns it recognizes, the more data it can analyze.4 There are others that are working on neural network chip hardware: Stanford researchers David Stork, James Burr, and Michael Murray are developing a Bolzmann machine neural network that promises to be the fastest pattern-learning machine ever built. Corticon, a company that's been formed specifically to develop and market neural network chips, has premiered a chip that can be linked into networks of several thousand neurons. AT & T Bell Labs researcher H.P. Graf has developed a "superneuron" chip, with up to 8 neurons at a time that can each handle up to 1,000 connections.5 Scientists have far to go to achieve the powers of the human brain, but given the extraordinary achievements of the past decade, imagine the supercomputing capability 10 years from now. MIT professor, Seth Lloyd, who has made advances in quantum computation, believes that by then the world will have computers 100 million times as powerful as the Pentium-based PC.6 If computers will have tremendous processing power and if everything we come in contact with will be an integrated intelligent system, why will robots be necessary? Although all systems will become "smart", able to verbally communicate on a conversational basis with people and even physically capable of some human movement, we will still need and desire robotic beings for the following reasons: Strong human desire to anthropomorphise man. Whether in science fiction or reality, we've always attempted to build a machine in our image. As renowned MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) guru, Rodney Brooks admits, "Scratch all the AI researchers and you'll find that building a humanoid robot was their original motivation for getting into the field."7 Researcher or hobbyist, "droids" and the like are progressing in labs (don't think that the military isn't funding some of this) and garages throughout the world. Skin that breathes and sweats, electromechanical body parts, facial muscles that are capable of showing emotion - all controlled by a neural net brain - are getting closer and closer to a human replica. Mobility. Although new "intelligent" materials will give enormous adaptive and self-organizing power to objects, they will still require motility to meet our convenience needs. Nanoplastics will allow a chair to automatically alter its shape and temperature according to its occupant, sinks will let dishes wash themselves, bowls will form around food, and the dining room table will be voice activated to increase or decrease table size based on the seating capacity.8 Undoubtedly the home of the future will be a total system, communicating with its products and users to create an ideal home of luxury. Wouldn't the next logical step be to have a servant to fill in the small gaps that "smart appliances" won't be able to do? For instance, who will walk the dog? What will put the groceries away after our smart shelves have directly updated the supermarket to deliver when low on inventory? If we're in the living room and we want a soda, how will it get to us? If we forgot our eyeglasses in the bathroom, what in the smart house will bring it to us? The cheapest form of an in-home transportation system will be a mobile, autonomous, intelligent robot that can not only be applied in the home, but also in the office. Companionship. The need for robots to be our companions and to alleviate our loneliness may be the most influencing factor of all. Whether we're elderly and alone, young and single, or an only child, a robot can (and will) serve as a friend, lover, and teacher. Though it will be possible for any computerized object to converse with us, we will find that a biped form of ourselves will be the most desirable, the most accepted, and easiest to assimilate into our lives. We are already witnessing "social interface" programs, such as Microsoft's BOB. Although it's the first of its kind and not very sophisticated, its logo, a smiley face, is representative of the beginnings of a "personality". Notice that "BOB" is a human name, not a model number, and not an eight character file name. For most of us, the computer screen will be our main interface and gateway to the infoworld. We may spend more time with our screen than in direct interpersonal communications. Doesn't it make sense to make that screen as friendly and charming as possible? And to eventually give it a torso and legs so it can follow us around? MASTER DOMO Master Domo as his name indicates, will serve as a mobile head of the household, supervising and managing the information in our homes and in our lives. He (or she or other) will be the one that helps your elderly mother walk downstairs, makes last minute dentist appointments, brings the self-cooking dinner from the stove to the dining room, takes care of your personal finances monitoring the stock market 24 hours a day, repairs networked household systems should any diagnostics indicate failure, puts garbage in the smart receptacles, and, if no one else is around, you may try to ask Master D. what your teenage daughter did last weekend while you were away. MS. INFORMATION Ms. Information is your ideal work assistant. Ms. Information (she doesn't like to be called Miss Information, since Misinformation is something she tries to prevent) will constantly filter and analyze data, check sources and update the company's existing libraries, and use the new information to output spreadsheets and reports. She'll be able to prepare a 100,000 mail-merge marketing piece, do payroll, alert you to ongoing news in your industry, and Miss I. will do this all as she packs boxes and interfaces with UPS and FedX for deliveries (though we won't have paper or hard copies, we'll still have materials that will require shipping and receiving). Additionally, this robosecretary will stock supplies throughout the office, bring you your coffee (and lunch) and clean the office at night. And, you don't have to worry about sexual harassment (at least not yet). You may, however, be worried about job replacement when it comes to having future assistants like Miss Information. In the '80s, many secretaries questioned the same when the personal computer arrived, bringing with it automated word processing, spreadsheets, and databases. The PC actually created more and new positions. Though secretaries need to be computer literate and skilled in specific software packages, there are now approximately 18 different classifications for this position, as compared to just three - receptionist, secretary, executive secretary - a decade ago. The new areas include: transcription specialist, specialized secretary, administrative assistant, senior secretary/assistant, executive secretary assistant, statistical typist, desktop publishing/graphics specialist, production word processor, word processor/ administrative assistant, switchboard operator, receptionist, administrative receptionist, receptionist/word processor, office clerk, records clerk, data/order-entry clerk, customer- service clerk, and office manager.9 Like the computer revolution, new proficiencies must be learned, but robotics also promises to create more and new job opportunities. Eventually, Ms. Information, Master Domo, and other robot assistants will be purchased at Sears, Office Depot, Robots R Us, or similar retailers in a variety of mortal colors, shapes, genders, and age. Do you want your Robo-servant to look like Demi Moore or be more of a grandfather type such as Fred MacMurray? Or, would you prefer an automaton looking helper like Rosie from the Jetsons or R2D2? (Perhaps you'd like a clone of yourself.) Do you want your Humanoid Nanny to have an equivalent to a masters degree in teaching from Harvard, to be "warm and nurturing," or to have a "cold and authoritative" persona? The behavior or emotional functions of these androids will be built upon a flexible, self-teaching software that is preprogrammed with sets of rules and conditions, thus allowing the robot to respond to different social stimuli. Upon hearing a child's cry, the robot may pick the child up, use a quiet, soothing voice, and look into the child's eyes. Or the robot may determine that the crying child, who pushed another child, should receive a stern, loud voice, with its eyebrows pointed in and its arms crossed over each other as if to show an angry and strict expression. Different faces and mannerisms will correspond to the appropriate emotions. Even now there exists Smileys, a dictionary that is used by e-mail users to simulate facial expressions. Isn't this the basis for an emotional response system in robots? Naturally, emotions are subjective. Love, hate, fear, anger, humor, sympathy, courage, kindness, impulsiveness, boldness, all of these are individually defined. However, a basic description with examples will provide an intelligent robotic system a model to interpolate courses of actions based on its knowledge and its experiences (much like a child's behavior). But who will decide what its postulate set of emotional data will be? We haven't even created a standard of morals for ourselves so what laws will govern who creates machine behaviors and what behaviors robots will be given? If there are no safeguards for behavior at all, then robots may form their own adaptable schematics. If a robot has only known how to survive in a violent slum of New York, isn't it possible that a robot will deem violence to be appropriate? As electronic intelligence evolves, will robots ever be capable of consciousness or rebelling against their creators? If robots are programmed with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics10 or something similar, how do we fill in the gaps for the necessary exceptions? Living with people requires constant change and adaptation. The Three Laws may not be the appropriate laws for ruling all robot actions. (These exceptions provided a lifetime of stories from Asimov.) However, the Three Laws of Robotics may be the best robot principles to date. Now is the time for us to examine our goals and objectives for the robotic assistants and companions who will enable us to manage the rising flood of information that dominates our lives. Although there are many considerations, a future that includes robots could create an Infotopia in the next millennium. In a world of accelerating demands, robots can make our work and our lives significantly more manageable. In addition, since robots have no use for money, we could reap the financial benefits of their productivity. Best of all, a robot may prove to be our ideal companion! To err is human, to pERRfect is robot. "Dr." Joanne Pransky, the world's first robotic psychiatrist, brings Isaac Asimov's science fiction character - robopsychologist Susan Calvin, to life. "Dr." Pransky appears on radio and television to discuss the emotional aspects and psychological implications of a society where robots are part of everyday life. She also speaks on this topic at national and international conferences. In addition, she is a sales and marketing representative at Sankyo Robotics, the world leader of small assembly industrial robots, in Boca Raton, Florida. REFERENCES 1 Hafner, Katie. "Have Your Agent Call My Agent," in Newsweek, (February 27, 1995): 76. 2 Source: Daxtron Laboratories, Inc., in The Futurist, (March-April 1995): 5. 3 Hafner, Katie. "Have Your Agent Call My Agent," in Newsweek, (February 27, 1995): 77. 4 "Brainpower", in Discover, (October 1994): 61. 5 Freedman, David H. Brainmakers. New York: Touchstone, 1994. 6 Platt, Charles. "A Million MHz CPU?" in Wired, (March 1995): 125. 7 Freedman, David H. "Bringing up RoboBaby" in Wired, (December 1994): 78. 8 McGuinness, Kevin. "Nanoplastics" in The Futurist, (January-February 1995): 50-53. 9 Source: "Reinventing the Secretary", in The Futurist, (January-February 1995): 46. 10 Asimov, Isaac. I ROBOT. New York: Ballantine Books, 1983. "#1 A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. #2 A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. #3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."

Publications: Authored: • First armwrestling match between an EAP actuated robotic arm and a human, 2005 (pdf) • DARPA Grand Challenge - a pioneering event for robotic autonomous vehicles, 2004 (pdf) • I, Robot Đ A Movie Whose Time Has Come, 2004 (pdf) • From the Judge's Bench, 2002 • Tutorial: An intelligent operating room of the future - an interview with the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center, 2001 (pdf) • Aibo - the No.1 selling service robot, 2001 (pdf) • Surgeons realizations of robodoc, 1998 (pdf) • Time for Some Good Old-Fashioned PR, 1997 • Viewpoint: Service Robots - how should we define them?, 1996 (pdf) • Robots: Our Future Information Intermediaries, 1995 • Social Adjustments to a Robotic Future, 1993 Interviewed / Mentioned: • "THEYRE HERE: Welcome to the world of robotics", 2005 • "Spectators thrilled as robots combat for the ComBots Cup", 2005 • "Robonexus: Day 3 Report", 2005 • "Not-so-remote control/Ever wanted to cross-breed a vacuum cleaner? Latest robots take the floor in San Jose show", 2005 • "Desafio human—ide", 2004 • "Beyond the Matrix", 2004 • "I, Robot Psychiatrist", 2004 • The Robotic Psychiatrist Answers, 2004 • No Winner in a Desert Race for Robots, 2004 • Real-life Susan Calvin, 2004 • Gearheads, 2003 • Commercial Robots: Close but Not Quite There, 2003 • BattleBots: The Official Guide, 2002 • The Good Guide to Bad Bots, 2001 • The Future of Your Life, 2000 • The Future of Pets, 2000 • Are We Ready to Live and Work with Robots?, 1999 • Contact Dr. Joanne