Contrary Voices

“Contrary Voices..”: Robots and Avatars

The Robots and Avatars Forum focused on the skills that might be needed in a future workplace where robots and avatars are commonplace, useful and productive. We believe it is important to embrace this yet there are also many implications of this future development. The Robots and Avatars Forum not only provided a space to discuss the benefits and opportunities provided by robots and avatars, but also sought to draw out more contentious areas of debate and some of the issues surrounding this future vision.

Below we have outlined some of the more ‘contrary issues‘ that were raised during the Forum which look at: Representation and identity, data security, trust and credibility, technological progress, and politics and borders.

Representation & Identity

One participant asked “what does creating Avatars really mean?” He suggested that we have plenty of experience of various forms of representations of identity and sited the example of African Dogon Masks and rituals which have been around for “literally thousands of years”, and which played a “very similar social function” then as they do now. He also suggested that to participate you need to make a representation of yourself.

The question was raised of whether young people are actually creating new identities online or whether they were in fact using theses spaces as a sort of playground, a space for experimentation at a time (teenage years) when your identity is naturally in a state of transition anyway.

Another participant demanded that we think in terms of a model of identity, in relation to robots and avatars, that is complex enough to be able to accommodate the dialogue between both a sense of self and different ways of performing ourselves. He used the term ‘filtered identity’ to describe how we are either true or untrue to different aspects of ourselves at different times and in different spaces. He framed this as a way of understanding the “complex and subtle ways we navigate identity”.

This was echoed by another participant who explained that you can understand identity as “the self with different aspects”. She went on to say that “the self extended through time feels very real even if parts of that self have become magnified” through forms like avatars.

Data Security

One participant speaking in relation the protection of social data, raised the issue of how certain funding bodies demand potentially sensitive data regarding identity in order to satisfy ‘equality’ criteria, which, especially in relation to young people, she sometimes feels uncomfortable about providing. She sited the example of being asked to give data on the sexual orientation of teenagers, at a time when their notions of what sexual orientation is, let alone what their sexual orientation might be, are in flux.

Trust & Credibility

The importance of the trustworthiness and credibility of robots and avatars was challenged by during the forum with one participant suggesting that a ‘perfectly’ crafted, infallible avatar would just be “really boring”, since for him the pleasure of life can be found in a certain chaos and a perceived randomness which defines the human experience. He wondered how it might be possible to accommodate these ‘more human’ qualities in robots and avatars in the workplace and business environment. In response, another participant emphasised the differences between business and enterprise environments and game based environments, when thinking about how ‘randomness’ might operate and how useful it might be.

He went on to highlight what he sees as a “disconnect” between the complexity of technology and the modest uses which we currently engage it with. In relation to trust, he said “avatars certainly won’t be conscious” and suggested that they would, in a business meeting scenario for example, become “just another service round the table”. He made an analogy to the breaks in a car, which fulfil a very particular function and despite the fact that they are subject to you trusting your car mechanic, ultimately you trust them 99.9% of the time.

He also suggested that we should not be talking about avatars going down the route of having to have professional indemnity. In short moving away from sci-fi notions that they will become a ‘replacement’ of humans. This prompted a challenge to the thinking that might take us to a the scenario of having an “imaginary party” with avatars consciously sitting round a table like humans. Another participant, remained perplexed about how people are able to jump in thinking from the current technology involving avatars and robots to an imagined future where avatars could become our “imaginary digital friends” or where they might be able to take part in a business meeting.

Technological Progress

One participant pointed towards sci-fi scenarios of the future, reminding us about the dystopian possibilities of a digital future, emphasising that “technology does not always equal progress”. He went on to articulate the importance of not loosing track of “ways of being that cross back and forth between the body/analogue and the virtual/digital”. As such he framed a way of looking towards the future as not only as movement towards the digital but also proposed the idea of ‘bridging’, a way of simultaneously acknowledging the body within a digital future, as route forward.

Another participant added to this input on ‘bridging’, suggesting that the “screen is a barrier” to our experience of avatars. She proposed a movement away from the screen as important step to aid the development of our relationship to avatars.

It was also suggested that there is a “huge amount of work still to be done” culturally, socially and psychologically around current forms of social media – a certain maturing process is necessary before we make “our entry onto the dance floor”.

Politics & Borders

One participant challenged ideas around technology and avatars, in particular whether they are an equalizer emphasising that it is only a very small proportion of the world that actually has access to the technology.

Another participant also raised issues relating to the politics of control and censorship asking: “How do you know what you put online is really being controlled by you?”. She reminded us that the web “is not as free” as we might think and raised the potential future issues of avatars being controlled by nations, borders and similar boundaries that exist in the physical world, which could lead to what she described pejoratively as “national sets of avatars”.