The Commons’ Education Select Committee thought it would be nice to have a robot give evidence. What it got was an MP3 player with a face.
Pepper the robot – a Franco-Japanese-made, white, 120-centimetre-tall plastic automaton – was carted into the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House around 11:00 on Tuesday morning.
She (he? They? It? Somebody in Pepper’s human retinue said the thing was “gender fluid”, but its main handler kept using female pronouns) was there to have a chat with MPs about the endless possibilities of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution – the brewing cocktail of automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, and whatnot, bound to change our lives forever, and possibly pulverise millions of jobs. And, for the sake of confusion, Pepper is an it.
Now, large-scale automation is a complex topic. Its consequences for multiple aspects of human society – from labour, to defence, to healthcare, to, of course, education – are assumed to be profound and certain to be unpredictable. Talking about it can feel frustrating, as views on its real impact vary wildly, and beget a thousand different recommendations. Will robots steal our jobs, or create more employment opportunities? Are we ready for it? How should we gird our loins for the forthcoming disruption? Who knows, really?
Not Pepper, that’s for sure.
For one hour before Pepper’s triumphal entrance, three experts from UCL, Nesta and Siemens engaged just in that kind of nuanced, data-based, academic conversation with the Committee’s MPs. They studiously tackled issue after unresolved issue, from AI bias, to education reform, to pure epistemology.
“What is knowledge? Why should we believe something?,” asked UCL professor Rose Luckin at one point. “What a wonderful philosophical discourse,” committee member William Wragg MP would remark – under the austere blue gaze of Maggie Thatcher’s portrait. For the non-specialist, quite a slog. One cannot really blame the Committee for wanting a bit of fun after all the arduous talk of global trends largely beyond their control. That parcel of fun and silliness came along under the guise of Pepper.
Pepper had been kitted out with a microphone – taped directly onto its ear-loudspeaker – and allotted a nameplate on the table, behind which it stood alongside its bosses from Middlesex University. There was no mystery about this being a media stunt: the Committee’s Chair, Robert Halfon MP, explained that the invitation had been extended following his visit to Middlesex, where computer scientists had programmed Pepper to interact with schoolchildren.
“We are not auditioning for the sequel of The Matrix,” Halfon said, to nobody’s laughter, shortly after Pepper’s entrance. “I thought this was an opportunity to showcase the work done at Middlesex University.”
It was a win-win: Pepper and its human masters got the spotlight, while the MPs got the headlines and the snark about being the first select committee to hear evidence from a robot. (Cue inevitable jokes on the Maybot). Not Cambridge Analytica scandal-levels of fame, but better than nothing.
Pepper kept nodding and contracting its tiny hands, until an MP finally asked it to introduce itself. From where I sat, in the first row, I could see a Middlesex University student sitting next to the robot tap on her smartphone, prompting Pepper’s opening line: “I am the resident robot at Middlesex University,” the robot said.
Another MP duly asked a question about robots’ role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Tap on the smartphone: Pepper’s nasal voice replied that “Robots will have an important role to play.” That was followed by more questions, followed by more taps, followed by more robo-pabulum. The delighted MPs asked for a round of applause. The student locked her smartphone. Pepper went back to angstily clenching its hands.
Ahead of the hearing – and again after it – it had been clarified that both the MPs’ questions and Pepper’s answers had been prearranged and scripted. But I had expected at least some rudimentary speech recognition, rather than outright button-pushing. When Thelma Walker MP, a former teacher, questioned the Middlesex University team how one could use Pepper in a classroom without running the risk of it “becoming a toy”, I could barely suppress a cackle.
I was left wondering what sort of narrative the Committee was trying to project. If we were to consider Pepper’s appearance as a statement on – or a harbinger of – our automated future, it is an odd one. It’s not the future embodied by Atlas, Boston Dynamics’ much-hyped war machine – ostensibly skilled in every flavour of derring-do from pre-programmed parkour to staged wrestling: the Atlas-future is a fictional, but dangerous place, where machines not only have stolen our jobs, but they are now actively kicking our fleshy behinds.
The Pepper-future is also not the future envisioned by Sophia, Hanson Robotics’s sinister, token-peddling womandroid, who strives to look and act human to the point of having a passport; the Sophia-future is a sci-fi world where humans and robots are peers, who have conversations, arguments, and possibly relationships.
Pepper’s pantomime did not make me feel excited about AI, automation, or technology, and it didn’t scare me either. The Pepper-future is peopled by cute machines that can perform few tasks – are very beat-uppable – and pose very little threat to our jobs. It was misleading on several levels, and I couldn’t help thinking that, had the Committee decided to have a robotic arm, or a burger-flipping frame, hauled in the Thatcher Room instead of the smiling Pepper, they would have wound up with a worse media stunt but a better idea of the dangers and opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The session idly droned forward, until the Committee Chair, with a glint in his eye, thanked Pepper for its attendance. Tap on the smartphone, and Pepper bowed and thanked back. I stood up and hastily walked towards the exit. But the way was blocked. “Hello, I am Salt,” another, identical robot said, pointlessly.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
