01 Apr Fast Company | This Artist is Teaching Tech Execs How To Make Devices More Lovable

While working on his master’s thesis at the MIT Media Lab, OpenDocLab Research Affiliate Alexander Reben began developing his question-asking robot, BlabDroid.  In an article for Fast Company titled “This Artist is Teaching Tech Execs How to Make Devices More Lovable,” Josh Dzieza discusses the social, emotional, and technical implications of BlabDroid.

The great paradox about much of Reben’s work, is that though we we may know that it’s absurd to empathize or engage in an emotional way with machines, we do it anyway. Whenever you curse at your broken-down car or plead with your unresponsive printer you are, in a limited subconscious way, treating them like living things… As social animals we’re hardwired to treat things socially, even when objectively they’re nothing like us at all.

Read Dzieza’s complete article at Fast Company.