Tag: Harmony

Posted on

Will We Love Robots?

“It is estimated that there are now more than 1.7 million robots with social attributes worldwide. They care for, educate, help, and entertain us. There have also long been highly engineered sex robots. But can these machines actually develop feelings – or even feel love?” (Website ARTE, own translation) ARTE asks this question in the series “42 – Die Antwort auf fast alles” (“42 – The Answer to Almost Everything”). The program “Werden wir Roboter lieben?” (“Will we love robots?”) will be broadcast on February 19, 2022. The online version is already available from January 20. Dr. Hooman Samani, a robotics expert at the University of Plymouth, Prof. Dr. Martin Fischer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Potsdam, and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, an information and machine ethicist at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, will have their say. Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel has been researching conversational agents and social robots for more than 20 years and has published the Springer book “Soziale Roboter” (“Social Robots”) at the end of 2021. More information on the program via www.arte.tv/de/videos/101938-004-A/42-die-antwort-auf-fast-alles/.

Posted on

Speaking with Harmony

There is great media interest in the new book “Maschinenliebe” (ed. Oliver Bendel), which was published in October 2020. Several review copies were sent out. The title means “Machine Love”, “Machines for Love” or “Machines of Love”. Three contributions are in English. One of them – “Speaking with Harmony: Finding the right thing to do or say … while in bed (or anywhere else)” – is by Kino Coursey (Realbotix). From the abstract: “Doing or saying the right thing in response to circumstances is a constant problem, especially for embodied personal companions like Realbotix’s Harmony. In this paper we will describe the Harmony system, how it finds the right thing to say or do, and how recent advances in neural network-based natural language processing and generation will be integrated into next-generation systems. These advances will allow the transition from pattern-oriented responses to dynamic narrative-oriented response generation. Future systems will be able adapt to their situation much more flexibly, and allow a wider range of role-playing and interaction.” More information via www.springer.com/de/book/9783658298630.

Posted on

Talking to Harmony

At the end of June 2020, DIE WELT conducted an interview with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel about sex robots and love dolls. It was especially about their natural language skills. Particularly owners and users who want to have a relationship are interested in conversations of all kinds, about God and the world and in the sense of “dirty talk”. Companies like Realbotix go very far in this respect. Harmony for example can talk to her partners for hours in a quite convincing way. The engineers experiment with GPT-2, but also with other language models. Kino Coursey, AI boss of Realbotix, deals with this topic in his article “Speaking with Harmony” for the book “Maschinenliebe” (“Machine Love”) which will be released in October. The interview with Oliver Bendel was published on 11 July 2020 in the printed edition of DIE WELT, under the title “Intelligente Sexroboter sind begehrte Gesprächspartner” (already published the day before in the electronic edition, under the title “Was Sexpuppen können” …). In addition, an English version – “Intelligent sex robots are sought-after dialogue partners” – is available.