Android Doppelgangers

March 06, 2009

What if you had a duplicate of yourself? I’m not talking about a Second Life avatar or some other such simulation meant to be viewed on a laptop screen.

I’m talking about an actual life-size android, fashioned to match your physical proportions, hair color and facial features, and equipped with a speech synthesizer that duplicates the sound of your voice, and perhaps even equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities?

What if you could control your robotic double from a remote location, or even program it in advance to make whatever statements and/or perform whatever actions you desired?

Sounds awesome, right? Maybe not... keep reading.

Android doppelgangers might have a host of useful applications. The lifelike machine could take over for you at the office on days when you’ve got a nasty cold or just feel like taking a mental vacation. (If you’re really industrious, you conceivably could even hold down two fulltime jobs.) Dreading an unpleasant meeting with the soon-to-be ex-spouse to negotiate who gets the condo and the silverware? Your android double could handle it for you.

No longer would you have to worry about offending someone by turning down a dinner invitation because you’ve already made other plans—just send the android to whichever engagement is likely to be least enjoyable. It’d be huge for VIPs, too. Members of Congress wouldn’t have to miss important votes because they need to go to go to fundraising events or attend a ribbon-cutting or chili cook-off in their hometowns. Movie stars could send their robotic doubles out on the town to be stalked  by paparazzi, while professional football or basketball players could deploy their electronic clones to sign autographs or make deodorant commercials while they go shopping for some custom rims for the Escalade or spend some quality time with their PlayStations.

On the other hand, you don’t have to be Rick Deckard, the renegade-android hunter from Blade Runner, to spot some hellacious potential pitfalls to having people’s synthetic twins running around all over the place. Unless people continuously remote-controlled their electronic look-alikes, the devices would need to be able to function with a far greater degree of autonomy than our other gadgets, including the ability to respond to a range of situations and problems and extremely sophisticated machine learning capabilities.

What if your android doppelganger goes off the reservation and starts insulting your boss, cutting in line at Starbucks or robbing liquor stores? Would people have legal responsibility for what their android doubles say or do? Moreover, since your machine would be created in your likeness and be imbued to some degree with your knowledge, ideas and sensibilities, to what extent would it be you? When that appliance   malfunctions, wears out or becomes outmoded has your face, could you bring yourself to toss it in the landfill and replace it with a newer model?

People fantasized about having supernatural doppelgangers long before they dreamed up the idea of robots. In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “William Wilson,” for example, the bard of Baltimore imagined what it would be like to be a reprobate being shadowed by a more principled but otherwise identical version of himself. The first place in which I remember seeing an android double was in circa-1960s Action Comics, where the Man of Steel had a cadre of Superman Robots to fill in for him on occasion. (He also had a robotic Clark Kent, whom he once sent to fulfill a luncheon obligation with th pesky flirt Lois Lane.)

It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that researchers in the U.S., Japan and Europe even began to develop the technology needed to create anthropomorphic robots such as Manny,  a walking and sitting machine developed in 1989 to help the U.S. Army test protective clothing. (To make Manny seem more like an actual soldier, he not only breathed but also was designed with the ability to sweat.) By the mid-2000s, scientists at Hanson Robotics were creating eerily lifelike talking facsimiles of Albert Einstein and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. (Here’s a YouTube video  of the latter.)

In 2006, Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro took things a step further and built Geminoid, http://www.irc.atr.jp/Geminoid/a $500,000 remote-controlled android replica of himself.
Here’s a YouTube video of Ishiguro and his creation, in which it’s surprisingly difficult to tell them apart.

Though Ishiguro has joked that Geminoid’s intended function is to stand in for him at the future at scientific conferences, the official Geminoid web page gives the project a decidedly more existential spin.

Where does the feeling of one's presence, such as the atmosphere or the authority of a person come from? How can it be captured, revived, and transmitted?

That brings me back to another 1960s comic book hero. NoMan was an android—actually, an assortment of networked androids—whose electronic memory contained the intellect and personality of Professor Dunn, a scientific genius whose own meat body had given out. If one of his bodies became damaged, NoMan simply transferred his consciousness to another of his bodies. (He had to be careful not to run out of bodies, of course.) If we reach the point where we can actually duplicate and transmit what makes a person distinctive, won’t that require us to rethink our concept of individual identity?

So what do you think of the idea of android doppelgangers? (And should I write a follow-up blog on a related subject, Japanese fembots?)  Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Milo Ledezma]

An escalation of this technological advancement seems more likely than a happy ending.

[Astroboy]

If I had an army of android doppelgangers, I could rule the world!

[Elliot]

It would be really creepy to have to look at an exact duplicate of yourself, doing stuff.

[Arnold Fan]

This could be the start of the big android takeover.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

Would politicians start blaming their misstatements on their android doubles? Sounds like a convenient excuse.

[Mothra]

That video is way creepy.

[Sally Henson]

How much would these androids cost? I suspect this is an option that would be available only to the extremely rich.

[Natural Man]

People should concentrate on being themselves, instead of trying to create artificial duplicates of themselves to do who knows what. This would be the end of personal responsibility.

[Ken Caldwell]

I wonder if this is the real explanation for Patty and Kathy on "The Patty Duke Show."

[George Little]

I think Patty was the android. That line in the theme song about "a hot dog makes her lose control" always puzzled me.

[Patrick Kiger]

I think it was Kathy...an actual human 1960s teenager liking "the minuet, ballet russe and crepes suzette" sounds implausible to me.

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[John C]

Mr. Kiger,
The robot is likely a part of a future doppelganger (x). But the next step will be an artificial and virtual (x), existing only in a cloud of memory. All your experiences to be stored. Your (x) will know more about you than you. The technology is getting close...