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Talking to Machines


By Hans Runge Kristoffersen

Did you talk to a machine today – and were you aware of it? In the exhibition "Your Digital City" you will meet some machines that you cannot only talk to, but that you will be fond of as if they were flesh and blood. That is at least the intention of the producers. And it is actually an old dream.


At present the cinemas are showing a film called "Robot Man" about a robot with so many human qualities and feelings that its owners allow it to become a human being. It is the so far latest of a long series of science fiction films also comprising the Star Wars films with the two popular robots R2-D2 and C-3PO; sheer fiction where robots and humans are communicating on equal terms. It is not yet so in the real world – or is it?

The annual Turner competition for talking robots has just been held. The winner is the robot that a panel of people can talk to for the longest time without finding out that it is a robot. It had been expected that at the turn of the century they would be able to succeed for 5 minutes. The goal has hardly been attained yet, but it is absolutely within reach.

It all began with Edison
The first one to have people talk and listen to a machine was the legendary American inventor Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931). In 1877 he invented the phonograph with a needle would transform sound waves to a groove in a roller and then again play the recorded sound. In the 1890’s Edison began to mass produce a talking doll for children; a doll with a phonograph encapsulated in the belly.

The first talking machine to become part of all Danes’ everyday life was "Miss Clock". Any protest would be lost on the neat, but unrelenting voice belonging to telephone operator Anna Sommer, KTAS [Copenhagen Telephone Company Ltd.]. Technically Miss Clock is an automatic time signal which is being transmitted via the Danish telephone network every 10 seconds. It was started in 1939 by KTAS and became nationwide concurrently with the automation of telephone exchanges. In 1993, the time signals were transferred to a digital machine operated by radio signals from Frankfurt am Main and thereby synchronized with the international time signal.

Voice Response

Our talking with machines got a new dimension with the change-over to digital telephone exchanges. Hereby the digital technique’s many possibilities of sophisticated solutions could be used. The great breakthrough for voice response systems took place in the mid 1990’s. They are replacing the telephone exchanges and service workers by a machine answering calls around the clock and guiding people to the goal by offering them the choice between different possibilities by pressing figures, star, and hash.

The voice response machine is merely an insert card for an ordinary pc which can service several telephone lines by programmes and sound files. We are not in doubt that it is a machine that is talking to us. But that may change.

Machine or Human Being?
You can chat on the Internet. It is almost equal to the Party Line where you make a call and talk to people who have called the Line at the same time. Chatting takes place via a pc and the Internet – and here you join a chat forum. Whilst you are talking to each other on the Party Line, you are writing when you chat. It is a written conversation. It may be an exchange of views on topics of common interest or a political debate, but you do not always know if you are chatting to real people or to a robot.

In order to make sure that there is always some interesting chat available to captivate the participants, the companies operating these chat forums have robots monitor the debate. One of the tasks of the robots is to remove undesirable words, e.g. pornographic expressions. This may be quite reassuring although censorship always opens the possibilities of abuse and manipulation. But the machines are not only interfering when undesirable things are being written. They are also interfering when the debate is too dull or too slow. Then the machines begin to participate in the chat themselves without revealing themselves as machines and on equal terms with the human participants in the chat. We do not discover that we are having a profound conversation with a robot or that the very eloquent young woman you are falling in love with is a robot.

Hardware with Feelings
Some years ago some strange, primitive, small electronic games called Tamagoshis were launched on the market. They were the first robo-pets. These small machines were dressed in an aura of being living creatures. They were supposed to be looked after and taken care of all the 24 hours, and to many children their tending became more important than school work. When the machine required action, it did not matter what the teacher said, the machine had the first claim to attention; otherwise it would die. If the poor creature was so unfortunate as to die, a cemetery has been made on the Internet in cyberspace where you can lay the creature to rest and later visit the grave.

Not quite as demanding are the six Furbies which have moved into "Your Digital City". Six small, long-haired cuddle toys that laugh when tickled and that sleep and sneeze. They can talk to each other and move their arms, legs, and ears. Six electronic pets needing care and attention.

The so far most sophisticated version of this kind of robot toys is a dog with instincts and feelings which is marketed by Sony under the name of Aibo. It has been programmed to learn from what you do to it. The robot develops a personality adapted to that of its owner and tries to win attention and solicitude which is given to a real live dog.




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