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An Ethnography of Robotics: Potentials and Challenges in Making Robots More Human

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An Ethnography of Robotics: Potentials and Challenges in Making Robots More Human Title An Ethnography of Robotics: Potentials and Challenges in Making Robots More Human Author(s) Kemiksiz, Asli Citation Issue Date Text Version ETD URL https://doi.org/10.18910/77471 DOI 10.18910/77471 rights Note Osaka University Knowledge Archive : OUKA https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/ Osaka University An Ethnography of Robotics: Potentials and Challenges in Making Robots More Human Ph.D. Thesis for Examination Submitted May 2020 by Asli Kemiksiz Supervisor & Reviewer: Atsuro Morita Co-reviewers: Chihiro Shirakawa and Eisei Kurimoto Osaka University For Leo Demir ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1. On the Robot 10 1.1. The Robot Multiple 11 1.2. The Robot in History 14 1.2.1. Automata 17 1.2.2. Science Fiction to Science Fact 21 1.2.3. Japan 23 1.3. The Robot in Technoscience 27 1.3.1. On the Uselessness of the Humanoid Robot 28 1.3.2. Robot the Tool 32 1.4. The Robot in Anthropology 35 1.5. Conclusion 37 Chapter 2. Matsumoto Laboratory 39 2.1. The Empty Laboratory 42 2.2. The Dynamic Laboratory 49 2.3. Tradition and Change 57 2.4. The Situated Laboratory 60 2.5. Conclusion 63 Chapter 3. Materials of Imagination 64 3.1. Introduction 64 3.2. Playing String Figures with the Laws of Robotics 68 3.3.The Familiarity of the Boybot 74 3.4. Through the Looking Glass 83 3.5. Conclusion 86 Chapter 4. Modeled after Life Forms 89 4.1. Introduction 89 4.2. Embodiment in Robotics 95 4.3. Lifeless Robots 100 4.4. Modeling within the Computational Assemblage 103 4.5. Conclusion 107 Interlude. Workers and Lab Tools 110 Chapter 5 Laboratory Reproductions 113 5.1. Introduction 113 5.2. What Does the Laboratory Robot Do? 115 5.3. Experimental systems 122 5.4. The Education of a Robot 126 5.5. Conclusion 134 Conclusions 137 References 141 Acknowledgements This research has been made possible with the guidance and support of many people and institutions. I am endlessly grateful to the fact that I was surrounded by colleagues and professors who made my adventures in Ph.D. tolerable by helping me along the way. My supervisor, Professor Atsuro Morita is the best advisor that I could have. His priceless guidance and his openness to my ideas that might have been unusual in a rather traditional anthropology department is key in how this research has been formed. It is equally important to me that his support in providing employment throughout the years at Osaka University has made it possible for me to conduct research in Japan. I am lucky to have been a student of his, and I will cherish the opportunities and experiences I had in Osaka University all my life. I had the fortune to have Dr. Casper Bruun Jensen, who I am honored to call my mentor, to help me in my research. He has read and edited all my manuscripts, helped me with my ideas when I get stuck, and encouraged me to do more. Dr. Jensen and I co-edited a special issue of NatureCulture on anthropology and science fiction in 2019, which was one of the most enriching experiences I had in my Ph.D. I would like to offer my gratitude to Prof. Eisei Kurimoto, Prof. Chihiro Shirakawa, Assoc. Prof. Gergely Mohacsi, and Prof. Madoka Fukuoka of Graduate School of Human Sciences at Osaka University. I learned how to be an anthropologist from them, along with Prof. Morita, Dr. Jensen, and the recently retired Prof. Satoshi Nakagawa. They have been massively supportive; they read and listened to my research outputs throughout the years and helped me shape them into a Ph.D. dissertation. I would not be here without them and I feel deeply thankful for their guidance. I believe that the research environment can only be good if you share it with the right people. Osaka University Graduate School of Human Sciences did not only offer me amazing iv professors, I also have met fantastic laboratory mates. Dr. Wakana Suzuki, Dr. Liv Nyland Krause, Dr. Fukachi Furukawa, and Dr. Seollan Pyeon have helped me so much with my Ph.D. The rather recent additions to the laboratory, namely Mr. Hayato Kanzaki, Ms. Mariko Sakuragi, Mr. Emile St-pierre, Ms. Kara White, and Mr. Fabio D. Miranda, have made my life easier. They all are amazing people to work with, and I am glad that we ended up together in this laboratory. Ms. Kara White and Mr. Emile St-pierre also helped with the language checks of this dissertation to which I am very grateful. The ethnographic part of this research was only possible because of my interlocutors. I am deeply indebted to my main interlocutor, who I call Professor Matsumoto in this dissertation. He did not only accept me to his laboratory, but he also spared his time in his busy life for many interviews and all the questions that I had to ask. All the teaching staff, administrative staff, and many laboratory members were welcoming. I owe them my gratitude. This research has been funded by the scholarship of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), for which I am grateful to the Japanese Government and Japanese nation. I am also grateful to my previous supervisor from Istanbul Bilgi University, Dr. Bulent Somay, who helped me start with the foundations of the research which culminated in this dissertation. My sincere gratitude goes to the friends I made in Japan, who have been my support system surviving the Ph.D. journey: Ms. Seden Beysu, Ms. Gunes Ustuner Fujita, Ms. Hadas Kushelevich are among many. I am a very lucky person to have the constant love and support of my lifelong friends, especially Ms. Derya Kaya, Ms. Sedef Hekimgil, and Ms. Duygu Didem Tari who have always been there for me despite the great distances between us. Finally, I would like to thank my family. They have always been there for me. My parents and my brother Ali have supported me unconditionally, and I am lucky to have them. My sister Asuman is an amazing person on whom I rely on so often. She, with her husband v Efe, has also provided me with a constant source of joy–– the cutest nephew named Leo Demir. I would not have been here if not for all the support I was lucky to have. vi Introduction Figure 1. A Pepper working at a souvenir store in Yokohama Chinatown (Photo by author) Robots are everywhere. Humanlike machines have been in stories, films, and in other popular media for decades; now, a variety of machines we call robots are in entertainment, industry, in our homes… Particularly in Japan, one of the prominent countries of robotics research and use (Bekey et al 2008), the adoption of these technologies has been so normalized that one might meet a robot in daily life. These curious machines have growingly been the interest of social sciences and humanities (Robertson 2018, Suchman 2007, Kubo 2015, etc.) and the interest has been branching into the research and development of the robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) rather recently (cf. Richardson 2015). Robots and AI are not only 1 quite transformative technologies in terms of daily life, they are also deeply impactful on our understandings of a variety of topics, ranging from life to ethics. Hence there remains a lot to be explored anthropologically in these domains of science and technology. This dissertation focuses on the robots in development: rather than the more visible robots in use, as the one pictured in Figure 1, I was rather interested in those in laboratories. In addition, I have consistently been interested in humanoid robots, those who are envisioned to look and function like human beings. The robots in laboratories, as you will read in the following chapters, are marked by a few particularities. They are, to begin with, research tools. These robots are used to make better robots, that is given, yet due to certain developments in robotics and AI (which will be discussed throughout this dissertation) they are also used to understand higher cognitive functions and behaviors. More and more, roboticists are inspired by sciences such as biology, psychology, neuroscience, etc.; and their robots are conceived to further the understanding of a lot to do with what it means to be human. Furthermore, and related to their use as a tool, robots in the laboratory embody the meanings given onto them in current robotics and AI. They reflect the views and approaches in the disciplines, and also socio-cultural imaginations, worldviews of researchers, biases, hopes, fears, and more. Robots are quite thick with meaning, and in this dissertation I offer an analysis of my findings. Another interesting aspect of the laboratory robots is that their potential: as they are still emerging technologies far from being established, they hold onto the potential of developing into quite a lot of things, embedded into the imaginaries that help develop them. Robots are always thought together with visions of their future, and working on robots in the laboratory is therefore also future making practices participating into or deviating from the envisioned futures. 2 In my opinion, Japan is the most interesting place to do an ethnography about robots. It is a country where multiple entertainment robots are available for personal use, where in most other places the robotic vacuum cleaners are the only robots that people use. I will discuss in Chapter 3 that the imaginations of the robots are ubiquitous in popular culture and the robots are familiar to Japanese people.
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