View our final project trailer here

Diary of the Professor

January 20, 2020
GirlBot 1.0 is completed! After years of slaving over this machine, I have finally finished. Long hours of testing, weeks of no sleep, years of hard work and she is done. She will change the world and make all the single man in the world happy and satisfied. Men will fall in love with her and she will make them feel so at ease an comfortable. My product will make its debut in a few weeks. I cannot wait to see the public’s reaction to this wonderful creation of mine.

February 23, 2020
Girlbot 1.0 made her debut today at the Inventions Fair. She received a lot of attention and seems to be accepted among the audience there. I hope the response is just as great when she makes her first appearance in stores in a couple of months. My hard work cannot to waste; I expect her to me widely accepted by consumers all over the world.

April 1, 2020
Girlbot 1.0 was sold out today! Her first day in stores and she’s completely sold out! How exciting! All my years of laboring was so worth it!

May 20, 2020
Most of the Girlbots were returned. Consumers reported that Girlbot did not live up to their expectations. Contrary to the promises of Girlbot making the perfect companion, many people did not feel convinced that Girlbot was actually in love with them. Her responses seemed rather mechanical and programmed rather than natural. I guess it’s back to the lab for me.

October 4, 2020
After months of research and late nights, I think I have finally figured out what went wrong with the first version of Girlbot. I made the mistake of assuming that love is the same for all couples and that there is only one set way of expressing one’s love for another person. Therefore, the first version of Girlbot was programmed with certain emotions and feelings that I thought were essential to expressing love. Obviously, I was wrong in doing that. I should have realized that love is different depending on the couple and that it is not something that should be programmed. I am currently working on a newer version of Girlbot, Girlbot 1.5, who I think will be more successful in loving and being loved.

March 14, 2021
I am finally done with Girlbot 1.5! Unlike Girlbot 1.0, I have implanted a more advanced system into Girlbot 1.5 that will allow her to develop her emotions through learning from her surrounding and her experience. She will behave differently according to her setting and thus, will be able to develop her own form of love with her “boyfriend.” With Girlbot 1.0, everything was too programmed so hopefully, with the new advanced system, Girlbot 1.5 will not fail like Girlbot 1.0 did. I will be doing some more tests on her before presenting her to the world, since I do not want a repeat of what happened to last time. Hopefully, all will go as planned and she can make her debut at the next Inventions Fair.

June 16, 2021
Bad news today. I spent the last few months testing and reviewing the data for Girlbot 1.5. Even though she shows more signs of a normal girlfriend and did have some success with falling in love with her partner, I am not completely satisfied with the results. Unlike the first version of Girlbot, Girlbot 1.5 had the ability to develop her own behavior through experiences and her surroundings. However, her system is not advanced enough. Rather than developing her own emotions and feelings, Girlbot 1.5 developed her behavior from the people and things around her. As a result, she did not do what I had originally do what I intended her to do. She was unable to have her own identity. So, although she was somewhat successful in expressing her love towards her boyfriend, I believe her level of success can be greatly elevated if I somehow allow her the ability to develop her own identity, rather than just imitating the behaviors of others.

April 15, 2030
Years of working, and I am positive I have created the perfect girlfriend for all the single men out there. It took longer than I expected, but she’s completed and I have never been more proud. This has got to be my greatest invention yet. Unlike the other models, Girlbot 2.0 has the ability to think freely and develop her own emotions. I know I could have completed her a lot earlier, but unfortunately I made the mistake of letting the government know what I was working on. Apparently, they felt that a robot with its own conscious and free will would somehow endanger our society. They wanted to me to shut down my project, but of course I did not. My years of hard work will not go to waste because of their fear. Keeping this project a secret has delayed the whole process but it has all be worthwhile. I am almost 100% sure Girlbot 2.0 will be the perfect girlfriend and will have the ability to love and be loved. In order to be completely positive, I have devised a different method to test her, since the government have placed to many restrictions on me. I will allow her to go out into the world, and live her life like a human being. I will be monitoring her this whole time of course and will observe as she meet and fall in love with her mate. Hoepfully, my predictions will be correct!

Member

The division of labor
Kang – Editing the movie and powerpoint presentation.
Deyan – Acting and editing the movie.
Hong – Acting and creating the powerpoint presentation.
Truc – Writing the script and directing the trailer.

How much you have completed and how much you have yet to do
We have come up with the concept and the preliminary script.

What your argument is, and which texts and course ideas you are engaging with
Setting: Near-future in which humans and humanoid robots (AnthRobots) interact
Characters:
Professor – Works at SynthSystems Inc. a lab specializing in research on machine learning and improving the existing AnthRobot line
Ben Porter – Nerdy, socially-awkward high school boy. Very into computer science and math.
Jane – AnthRobot that escaped from the lab. Resembles a hipster teenage girl.
Plot: Jane, the first prototype of the new AnthRobot line, GirlBot 2.0 is completed and tested on. She is supposed to be the ideal girlfriend. However, everything goes wrong when Jane escapes from the lab and wants to have freedom.
Thesis: You cannot know whether or not something else is alive or conscious (solopism) unless you are the entity/have experienced what the entity has experienced.
Question: Can she truly reciprocate his feelings? Or was she just programmed to do that?

Supporting Texts: In Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing presents the idea of solipsism as an objection to the idea that machines could be considered human. Solipism is the idea that one’s mind is the only thing one knows is real. In other words, you can’t know for sure something else is human because you cannot experience life as anyone other than you. In Being There, passing is a prominent theme as people impose their own image of what Chance should be onto him, as this is what Ben does to Jane in the story.

Posted at Nov 21/2008 09:52AM:
h: This sounds like a fun project and certainly touches on ideas from the course. In addition to Turing and Being There, I wonder about MFL and Ghost in the Shell in terms of gender: why is the first AnthRobot a girl? Why not the perfect boyfriend? This doesn't need to be answered, necessarily, but at least thought about - why did you decide to make it a her? Is it because such robots are always girls? Is it because you're commenting on the fact that robots made to satisfy desires are always girls? The question you ask is a good one (can she truly reciprocate or is she only programmed)- and would tie in nicely with a consideration of gender (for instance, what about Rachel in Blade Runner?).

I'm looking forward to seeing the trailer.

Hsuan