Robot obviously failed to read man's emotions.
The clerk was not injured, the police said. Security footage shows the drunken Ishikawa kicking the robot, according to the police. Investigators said the damaged Pepper now moves slower and that its internal computer system may have been broken.
Here's why I think this is news: Robots are cute, funny, helpful. They do things that humans don't want to do, like dismantle bombs. Humans have a bit of sibling rivalry with our robot friends (and soon-to-be robot overlords). Consequently, we're a little happy when a robot -- that really should know better -- gets himself beaten up for not realizing that a pissed off, drunken man might beat it up. The programmers teach the bots to recognize emotions, but not to run away from the bad guys.
Meanwhile, the human that originally pissed off the drunken man did not get hurt.
I don't think this is as much a story about a man lashing out at a robot, I think it's a story of a man lashing out at a piece of furniture because he can't lash out at another human. According to the story, the drunk got mad at a clerk then kicked Pepper to show his disapproval. Where I think it'll be interesting when these robots have been humanized enough that taking your rage out on a robot isn't seen as hitting property, but a type of assault. I think it'll be a slow and fascinating transition.Kanagawa Prefectural Police said Mr Ishikawa admitted to damaging property because he did not like the attitude of the shop clerk
That's Hasbro's "My Real Baby", which Sherry Turkle devotes a good chapter to in Alone Together. See, MRB was an early ancestor of Pepper, in that it responded to feedback and was designed as a non-threatening human companion. As you might expect, some people attach to it. Some people attach to it too much. Some people, however... So the semi-spooky thing Hasbro discovered is that while MRB needed to respond to negative feedback, it also needed a mode to straight-up shut down if it experienced too much negative feedback. Why? A disturbing percentage of humans (something like 20%) would just sort of spontaneously kick the shit out of My Real Baby. Young, old, didn't matter. 40-year-old women would suddenly fling the toys at the wall to see what happened. Hasbro made the smart move of going "we're not going to plumb the depths of that abyss" and set a threshold at which point the toys just went inert. The Uncanny Valley is a poorly-understood phenomenon whose width and breadth we have not yet begun to explore. You or I can consciously know that Pepper is not human, will never be human, should never be human but when it acts just a little too human we need to muthafukin' kill the monster. Psychopass leverages this with laser-like precision. The smiley happy cop masks are a deliberate feint, a la Brave New World, to harness our discomfort with super-cute synthetic things. Furbies are hated a hell of a lot more than Beanie Babies for the simple reason that they ape life. Get any sensible person drunk and surround him by helpful, friendly death masks and he'll recognize them for the Frankensteins they are.
I have two questions: 1. Where can I watch this footage? 2. How did the robot react to having the shit kicked out of it?
Can't find the footage. This particular robot has a video camera on its belly, so perhaps it filmed itself getting beat up. This don't-waste-your-time funny fact-free discussion of the man-bites-robot incident suggests that robots can and should be used as an outlet for people's rage. "Better than beating up people," the guest says. The discussion is in English but it also has English subtitles. At 4'29", the subtitles say, "OK so you're advocating rage rowboats..." I suspect the subtitles were written by rowboats, I mean robots.
I just find this whole situation hilarious. First off, a drunken man half assedly beating on a robot for god knows what reason. Second off, the poor robot either antagonizing the man as hes being beat on, or alternatively, the robot trying to comfort the man as he's beating on him at the same time.