The Aesthetics of Humanoid Robot Design: The Psychological and Ethical Dimensions

Recent work in robotics has produced highly realistic androids that both look and act increasingly like human beings. Examples include Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, and the robots produced by Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University, widely displayed online. Not only do such humanoid machines represent a great design achievement; they also may come to pose something of a stimulus to our natural tendency to anthropomorphize the non-human for a variety of reasons, sometimes problematically. We are increasingly presented with hyperrealistic simulacra that are toward what Masahiro Mori has termed ‘the uncanny valley’—the point at which we are jarred by a near perfect android. The problem of other minds will thus likely emerge as yet another polarizing debate in the near future. I will here argue that such robots blur our very notions of mind and human personhood problematically, and that their development should therefore be subject to a moratorium, pending serious public discussion and potential policies. In order to justify my claim, I will here cite recent work in robot and design studies and invoke the thesis of moderate moralism in aesthetics.