Will the elderly ever accept care from robots?
August 18, 2012
(Credit: Hallowell House, LLC)
Set in the near future, Frank, a retired cat burglar, has two grown kids who are concerned he can no longer live alone. They are tempted to place him in a nursing home until Frank’s son chooses a different option: against the old man’s wishes, he buys Frank a walking, talking humanoid robot programmed to improve his physical and mental health.
What follows is an often hilarious and heartwarming story about finding friends and family in the most unexpected places. Robot & Frank features an award winning cast including Academy Award® nominee Frank Langella, James Marsden, Liv Tyler and Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon.
— ROBOT & FRANK website
Early in the new science-fiction film Robot & Frank (opening Aug. 17 in New York and Aug. 24 elsewhere), Frank, an elderly man, gets a visit from his son, Hunter. Worried about his father’s apparent decline, Hunter takes a gift out of the back of his car: a white robot with a humanlike body and a polite speaking voice.
The machine, Hunter promises, will keep his dad healthy and focused—and the house clean. Frank’s not so sure: “That thing’s going to kill me in my sleep,” he worries. But before long, the “health care” robot is cooking his meals, planting a garden, and planning activities to keep his human overlord occupied.
The film’s depiction of robot-human relations may still be a fantasy, but it’s also a reminder we’ve been expecting elder care robots like Frank’s in the real world for several years now, and so far, they’re nowhere to be seen. So what’s the hold up?
(read more at Slate)
Comments (28)
by Jake Witmer
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s08e02-awesom-o
by Steve Engard
Here is is the end of December, and the movie has yet to be listed in any of the theaters I get listings for. Any scheduled showings for the Vancouver-Portland area?
by Cybernettr
“A retired cat burglar?” Shouldn’t that be “a reformed cat burglar?” Is being a burglar a legitimate occupation, and does this film glorify breaking the law? Sorry, that strange use of words just jumped out at me. Is this the newest form of political correctness, using euphemisms for criminal activities?
by Editor
Yeah, and besides, who would steal cats? So wrong…
by Jrr37
Silly Editor.
He doesn’t steal cats, that would just be silly. He steals FROM cats! That makes much more sense.
by Editor
Ah, now it all makes sense … or are these cat robots? (insert spooky music here)
by Mark Harrison
Robot cats are a phenomenal idea. No-one expects cats to do what they are told to, so owners of “feline” robot pets would be even more willing to ascribe “personality” to what they do than AIBO owners….
by alliwant
Hope the story is well written and thought provoking. This is something we will see soon, maybe sooner than we think. There have been a large number of items on this site recently about architectural discoveries in the brain, and great leaps in the sophistication of robots. I can’t help but feel that this is an area where intelligence really is ever more accelerating.
by Dan Robinson
It’s not so much about how soon they can duplicate our abilities, but whether they can surpass us in certain areas and complement our efforts, as they already do in many ways. But another question is, when will they be able to reproduce themselves a meaningful fraction as fast as we do ourselves, and then keep it under control better than we do?
by GatorALLin
more links on walking human like robots here…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_m56irWKeI&feature=related
by John North
And then: I’m sorry Frank, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
by GatorALLin
liked this video on the movie http://vimeo.com/46849243
why not merge this with a real person?
like a version of this http://www.kurzweilai.net/double-by-double-robotics
by Editor
Thanks, added that trailer.
by MrFriendly
I think this is more of a 22nd century technology. I can’t imagine robots never progressing to the point where it happens, but I also can’t imagine it happening in less than a hundred years.
by cosmowrench
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8UeT9r4cmg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
by MrFriendly
Asimo is a marvel of technological engineering, but what Honda doesn’t mention in their videos is that they spend hours programming it for these demonstrations. It’s only semi-autonomous, and has to be reprogrammed for each new scenario/location.
by cosmowrench
So the hardware is there, now only the software, and i bet thats not going to take a 100 years. Ever heard of Siri, watson and others?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wznKSIkXiiY
Its at the end of the vid things start to get interesting.
by MrFriendly
Siri and Watson are amazing examples of the ever-expanding “narrow AI.” However, computer vision is the main area that must be advanced by quite a bit before any of these types of robots can become practical.
The human brain is immensely complicated (we all know that by now), and about a third of it (possibly more) is involved in processing visual information. Realizing hardware/software that can emulate that level of sophistication is going to take many decades, IF moore’s law does collapse in the next ten years. If it doesn’t, then I guess I could be wrong.
Google recently showed just what the field is up against when they used something like 16,000 processors to do deep, unsupervised learning on massive amounts of visual data. After a few days of processing, they advanced the field by quite a bit, but we’re still talking about 2d, static photos (i believe they were frames taken from youtube videos). Robots in the field would still need to be able to handle moving objects, shadows, partially obscured objects, etc.
The machine capable of doing this will be enormous, given current technology. Imagine trying to fit that into a robotic body, or imagine supercomputers trying to remotely feed commands to many robots.
I suppose that if neuromorphic technologies work out as it’s hoped, then moore’s law won’t even be an issue, and we might have truly autonomous machines within a couple decades; however, that type of hardware is proving to be extremely difficult to construct to be reliable and deterministic, and I’d say it’s still a wildcard.
by Mr.x
Our imagination does not mean anything to reality, and if we don’t have good reasons for thinking something like that our claim means nothing to the matter at hand.I could as well say: The sun shines, therefore I imagine these inventions will be fully functional in 666 days.
by GatorALLin
The number of the beast actually refers to the kangaroo …
check out this robot then… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnXU_JsnsQ&feature=watch_response
by Gorden Russell
There will be robots that can do anything a human can do in six to eight years. According to Brian Wilcox, the NASA manager of space robotics at JPL, there is now an 18-inch wafer with the processing power of 10 billion human neurons. Now apply Moore’s Law:
In 18 months there will be a 20 billion neuron equivalent wafer;
in 3 years 40 billion;
in 4.5 years 80 billion;
in 6 years 160 billion.
The human brain has 100 billion neurons. So after four doublings, these wafers will surpass our abilities.
by John Goodrich
At the very beginnings of both “The Singularity Is Near” and the more recent “Abundance”, the authors both stress the importance of being able to think of the progress of AI and associated technologies in an exponential rather than the linear sense that is prevalent in humans.
Once you can grasp Moore’s (very valid) Law and see how all this will accelerate the development of first super-human AI and then the technologies designed by these super-human intelligences to a point beyond imagination, it is quite easy to believe that all of what seems to be in the movie, will be the reality in well less than 50 years.
Taking 30 steps in a linear fashion will take you from your house to the street.
Taking 30 exponential steps will take you around the world.
30 years ago, the best computer took up a large room, demanded a lot of electricity, cooling, had limited computing capabilities and costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
Today your smart phone is thousands of times smaller, costs a few hundred dollars, has thousands of times the computing speed plus hundreds of other uses like INTERNET connection ( huge improvement) a camera, recorder, date book. go-everywhere phone, etc etc etc.
In the exponentially improving AI and AI-tech fields , the jump to atomic or molecular size level computers/ nanobots will not take the 30 years it did to go from room-size to pocket size computers .
It will be something closer to 14 years.
There are countless examples of how very advanced AI and AI-driven technologies can and will build upon each other and this is happening, more or less, right under our noses.
by Vin
Interesting that the robot resorts to emotional blackmail: presumably its AI will adapts to the personality it is with, and so becomes a kind of reflection of it (perhaps it saw Frank using that technique on his son?). So how would it be to be with someone who was basically becoming a clone of yourself? :D
by Vin
This is a must see film for me since I in middle age now and its all downhill lol. I love Liv Tyler (she was brilliant in ‘Mindwalk (1990)’ and the rest of this cast too. I think its likely that if a single robot like this doesn’t transpire, at least there will be ‘distributed robotics’, household modules and appliances networking a similar solution.
by Bri
An interesting theme for a movie. Probably won’t do great in the theaters, but if Liv and Susan got involved, they must feel it touches the issues well. Home health care robots are really close. The same issues are holding them up since we began to dream of robots. They have to be able to understand the world enough to function on there own. Very close now, but like I say, they are going to take jobs away at a rapid rate. Plants a garden? If you’ve got this robot would you hire a landscaper? Cook your food? Possibly like a five star gourmet chef, at a fraction of the cost. Will you go to Mckey D’s? Clean up after you? Will you hire a housekeeper or cleaning service? Wash your clothes? Will you need all those laundrymats. They are very expensive and time consuming. That expense can go towards the robot that does all those other neat things. Help with home work or watch the kids.? It just goes on and on.
by Mr.x
If this technology matures we can do away with all this interpersonal stuff.Just buy your partner(s) and servants.The dream of some nerds?To answer the question: sure.If time is big enough even infinitesimal probabilities come true.But I don’t think the probability is infinitesimal.
by snake0
Liv Tyler and Susan Sarandon have both been whoring themselves out for any kind of crap lately, their presence doesn’t necessarily mean friendly robots are going mainstream now. We’re still far behind Japan in that area of thinking. I’m sure once the tech is there though the rich will scoop them up and then everyone else will blindly follow.
by Ian Clarke
Forget old age – I want a robot now! Not the Dalek-like creations on the Slate link, more along the lines of Asimo. Although, when such units do become commercially available, I suspect deaths from acute laziness will be commonplace.
As sad as it may seem, in my dotage, I think I’d trust a robot more than a human to care for me.