Meet JIBO: Robot Friend or Robot Slave?

Yesterday I reported on a protest taking part at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, in which a small group of concerned citizens took to the streets to warn festival attendees of the potential dangers of sentient machines. Having seen the video below this morning, however, it's difficult to take these well intentioned crusaders seriously, especially if this represents the future of robotics. I'm talking, of course, about JIBO, the cute (seriously, just look at it) little robot designed to be the “World's first family robot.” JIBO is less like a robot and more like a tablet with a personality, as it's function is essentially to make your family life more convenient in a fun, charming way.

JIBO is designed to be the “World's first family robot”

The robotic roommate was not quite ready to make the trip to the festival this year, but Cynthia Breazeal, the MIT professor and social robotics pioneer behind the JIBO, was on hand to tell people all about it, and to court developers to produce apps for JIBO. Indeed, it appears there will eventually be a JIBO Store, though the software applications are being marketed not as “Apps,” but as “Skills,” very much in keeping with the ethos of the device as a robot helper with a personality. As Breazeal said herself, “It's very important for JIBO to have the right kind of personality that makes people really want to welcome and engage with this kind of technology.” When asked why the robot wasn't quite ready to make his (or her, does this thing have a gender?) public début, she said it was “Going through the commercialisation process right now,” which presumably means there's still a few kinks left to work out before JIBO is ready for us.

The robotic roommate was not quite ready to make the trip to the SXSW festival this year

Design-wise, the JIBO is very Pixar indeed, resembling a cross between their lamp mascot and Wall-E. It's primary functions are built around a set of built-in cameras, which use sophisticated facial recognition to track family members and develop knowledge of them over time. This could be anything from learning what you typically enjoy to breakfast in the morning so it can let you know if you're running low, to asking for your favourite colour so it can factor that into all future recommendations. It's being designed to recognise facial cues like smiles and frowns, which it will use to decide when it should take a picture, and communicates via expressive sounds that have more than a little in common than the noises made by The Sims in the titular EA video game series. The real selling point of JIBO is the display that makes up its face though, with the LCD screen acting as a window into your JIBO's thought processes.

Cynthia Breazeal on “The Rise of personal Robots”

Design-wise, the JIBO is very Pixar indeed, resembling a cross between their lamp mascot and Wall-E

Breazeal says that with JIBO “There is learning, there is adaptation, there is personalisation, there is perception, there is decision-making, there's communication and there's expression,” meaning it's certainly a device that's engineered to feel more like a pet than a toy. Breazeal, however, still isn't sure. She said they themselves are “Still trying to understand” the role JIBO will play in the average household because “It's a new thing." She adds that “In some ways, it's sort of like the kinds of relationships you have with a coach or a tutor,” but that “Some relate to it as an Internet-connected gadget,” and others relate to it as they would with an animal companion. It depends on the person.

“In some ways, it's sort of like the kinds of relationships you have with a coach or a tutor”

When it was first unveiled through a wildly successful Indiegogo campaign last year (raising over $2 million for a device retailing at $499), many people complained that JIBO was essentially a “Slave robot,” but this isn't a device that's going to do your shopping or sweep your floors. For one thing it doesn't move, though it is small enough to carry. Breazeal says that what makes it different from a device such as a Roomba is “This notion of platform, taking something from the playbook of the Android and iOS app ecosystems.”

There will eventually be a JIBO Store, though the software applications are being marketed not as “Apps,” but as “Skills”

Whilst I joked about it earlier of course, many are mindful of the potentially frightening side of artificial intelligence, especially considering the JIBO can connect to your household through Wi-Fi and has the potential to effectively control your home. None are more aware of this than the JIBO creator herself though, who admitted that “If it's a technology of high impact, there's always the opportunity to do things that are really wonderful and always the opportunity that it's going to be abused or misused on some way.” What do you think? Is JIBO cute or creepy? I'm on the fence personally, but I will say that the idea of an 11 inch, stationary toy going all HAL on me doesn't exactly fill me with dread. Unless they start equipping these things with flamethrowers.

Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from Kidderminster in the UK.