Currently, talking to a face is the ultimate guarantee that you are communicating with a human (and on a subconscious level makes you try to relate, empathise, etc.). If humanoid robot technology eventually surpasses the Uncanny Valley, discovering that I’m talking to a humanoid with an LLM and that my intuitions had been betrayed would undermine the instinctive trust I give to the other party when I see a human face. This would degrade my social interactions across the board, because I’d live in constant suspicion that the humans I was talking to weren’t actually human.
It is for this reason I think it should be the law that humanoid robots must be clearly differentiated from humans. Or at least that people should have the right to opt out from encountering realistic-looking humanoids.
asimov explained how androids should be human form so that our world continues to be designed around our shape, rather than leaving us behind. doesn’t require an uncanny face though.
It would not exclude clear differentiation, however. :)
Just like a chatbot posting on social media can add a message footer “this content was posted by a robot” to a fluent and human-like message, a humanoid robot, while having human form, can clearly identify itself as a robot.
Personally, I think such a design requirement is higly reasonable on social media (as a barrier or action threshold against automated mass manipulation) but probably also in real life, if a day comes when human-like robots are abundant.
Holy shit, that’s a great point that I wouldn’t have thought of. Great fucking point.
That’s a fascinating thought