The Asian Futures initiative, with support from a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Centers and Institutes Grant, is hosting University of Michigan Professor Emerita Jennifer Robertson for a talk on "Robots, Gender, and Techno-Spirituality in Japan."
Many Japanese roboticists building humanoids today have sought to imbue their gendered robots with kokoro, or "heart," "consciousness" and "emotion." Recently, the popular media have been full of references to "emotional" (kokoro-bearing) and even "spiritual" robots, with specific reference to Pepper, SoftBank's humanoid that debuted in 2015. She will discuss (and demystify) efforts to develop Pepper's "emotional recognition engine" based on biology-inspired "digital hormones." In this connection, she will revisit the declaration by pioneering roboticist Mori Masahiro that robots have the "Buddha-nature" within them and consider how gendered robotic technologies are deployed by humans to give shape and expression to their spiritual ideas and needs.
As of January 2020, Jennifer Robertson is Professor Emerita of Anthropology and the History of Art at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor. She is also an affiliate faculty of the Robotics Institute and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), UM, and Affiliate Professor of Anthropology and Japan Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.
