Corona Daily 377: Asimov Now, Part Final

This series on robots cannot be concluded without mentioning Erica – ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ according to her creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro. Ishiguro is the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. He studied images of several Miss Universe pageant finalists and created Erica. She is fluent in English and Japanese. In April 2018, she was hired by Nippon TV network as a newsreader. As one of the top 25 announcers on the network’s talent page, she is the only one with “Nil” appearing after her education and blood type.

Erica now gets her biggest break. She will play the lead role in a $70 million Sci-Fi film called “b”. An Android heroine in the celluloid world. Hailed as Hollywood’s first autonomous AI actor, she will play the role of “b”, an artificially intelligent woman, who can enter the body and mind of a human host. In the storyline, a scientist finds a perfect way to replicate human DNA. Once he realizes the dangers Erica may face, he helps her run away from the laboratory.

Erica differs in a major way from the robots we have seen in earlier films. She is not an animated character. She will not be performing based on a remote control run by a human being. The producers want to train her and let her act all by herself based on artificial intelligence.

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That is proving difficult. Matthew Helderman, the producer, tried the Marlon Brando method, whereby the star draws on her own life experience to create the character. Erica has no life experience and no emotional memories. Memorising lines is easy. She will be able to recite the entire film script if needed. But she can’t improvise. When directed, she doesn’t understand why she should say certain lines softly and others loudly. Khoze, another producer, is teaching her dialogue in one session, work on emotions in another session, and character development and body language on another day.

When Ishiguro created her, he didn’t know she would be cast in the leading role in a Hollywood movie. When walking, her air compressor joints make a robot-like movement, not very feminine. The producers have decided to shoot many of her scenes with her sitting down.

Currently three supporting human lead actors are auditioning. Some robots will be in support roles as well. One robot is part of the crew.

Erica’s biggest qualification, of course, is that she is immune to coronavirus.

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In 1970, another Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed a theory called “the uncanny valley”. The theory says that humans will react positively to a robot that looks and acts like a human – only up to a point. If the robot resembles a human too much, it triggers a sense of revulsion or eeriness.

A few years ago, another robot “Sophia” designed to resemble Audrey Hepburn was described by her maker as an evolving genius machine. In 2017, Saudi Arabia offered Sophia citizenship, making her the first robot with a human passport. Possibly as a result of Mori’s theory, people found her scary and repulsive and she disappeared from the news.

The gimmick of casting Erica for the key role may meet the same fate. Would I want to see this film? No, not at all. This is one area where I wouldn’t like robots to replace us, pandemic or no pandemic.

Ravi