AS robotics starts to spread, the success of countries in the robot era will depend in part on culture and how readily people accept robots into their lives, said Alex Ross, former US State Department advisor on innovation, in his best-selling book, The Industries of the Future.
“Western and Eastern cultures are highly differentiated in how they view robots. Not only does Japan have an economic need and the technological know-how for robots, but it also has a cultural predisposition,” Ross said.
According to him, “The ancient Shinto religion, practiced by 80 percent of Japanese, includes a belief in animism, which holds that both objects and human beings have spirits. As a result, Japanese culture tends to be more accepting of robot companions as actual companions than in Western culture, which views robots as soulless machines. In a culture where the inanimate can be considered to be just as alive as the animate, robots can be seen as members of society rather than as mere tools or as threats.”
“In contrast,” he said, “fears of robotics are deeply seated in Western culture. The threat of humanity creating things we cannot control pervades Western literature, leaving a long history of cautionary tales. Prometheus was condemned to an eternity of punishment for giving fire to humans. When Icarus flew too high, the sun melted his ingenious waxed wings and he fell to his death. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein’s grotesque creation wreaks havoc and ultimately leads to its creator’s death—and numerous B-movie remakes.”
In Eastern culture though, this fear is not as pervasive as it is in the Western culture. “The cultural dynamic in Japan is representative of the culture through much of East Asia, enabling the Asian robotics industry to speed ahead, unencumbered by cultural baggage,” Ross pointed out.
He explained: “Investment in robots reflects a cultural comfort with robots, and, in China, departments of automation are well-represented and well respected in the academy. There are more than 100 automation departments in Chinese universities, compared with approximately 76 in the United States despite the larger total number of universities in the United States.
“In South Korea, teaching robots are seen in a positive light; in Europe, they are viewed negatively. As with eldercare, in Europe robots are seen as machines, whereas in Asia they are viewed as potential companions. In the United States, the question is largely avoided because of an immigration system that facilitates the entry of new, low-cost labor that often ends up in fields that might, otherwise, turn to service robots. In the other parts of the world, attitudes often split the difference. A recent study in the Middle East showed that people would be open to a humanoid household-cleaning robot but not to robots that perform more intimate and influential roles such as teaching. The combination of cultural, demographic and technological factors means that we will get our first glimpse of a world full of robots in East Asia.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Earl H. Kinmonth, professor emeritus at Taisho University, reacted to my column last Tuesday (Will robots replace caretakers in Japan?), thus:
“With Japan’s persistently strict immigration policies curtailing the number of workers in the country, there will not be enough humans around to do the job at all.”
EHK: “Not strict at all. Extremely open for skilled workers. Increasingly open for unskilled workers.”
“Japan allows only 50,000 work visas annually, and unless something drastic changes, the math does not work.”
EHK: “Not true. Unlike the US, Japan does not have strict numerical quotas and there is no such thing as a ‘work visa.’ There are many different categories that allow work but no one work visa.”
“The robots depicted in the movies and cartoons of the 1960s and 1970s will become the reality of the 2020s,” Ross said.
EHK: “Extremely unlikely.”
“In response, Honda has created Asimo [the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility robot], a fully functional humanoid that looks like a 4-foot-tall astronaut stuck on Earth. Asimo is sophisticated enough to interpret human emotions, movements and conversation.”
EHK: “Asimo was not created in response to the Toyota creations which are not robots but rather androids.
EHK: “Asimo is not autonomous. I have seen Asimo in action. There is one operator and several support people. In other words, no labor saving at all.”
EHK: “Further, Honda has stopped production and development of Asimo.”
EHK: “Everything you have cited in your article is hype, not reality.
“How do I know?
“My original training was in electrical engineering and I closely follow geriatric care issues in Japan where I have lived for more than 25 years.
“I track developments in Japanese eldercare through Japanese language sources and personal observation.
“I’ll say it again.
“Everything you have cited in your article is hype, not reality.”
Humanizing robots
Ross explained further: “The first wave of labor substitution from automation and robotics came from jobs that were often dangerous, dirty, and dreary and involved little personal interaction, but increasingly, robots are encroaching on jobs in the service sector that require personalized skills. Jobs in the service sector that were largely immune from job loss during the last stage of globalization are now at risk because advances in robotics have accelerated in recent years, due to breakthroughs in the field itself, as well as new advancements in information management, computing and high-end engineering. Tasks once thought the exclusive domain of humans—the types of jobs that require situational awareness, spatial reasoning and dexterity, contextual understanding, and human judgment—are opening up to robots.”
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.