Intelligent Robots as Models for Studying Human Communication

When I hear about artificial intelligence in news and especially in movies, it's usually accompanied with the fear of a human-induced "robot-takeover" of Earth. While that is a heavily dramatized picture of what artificial intelligence actually strives to achieve, AI does contain this assumption that robots are essentially moving computers that require software and information provided by us humans in order to function autonomously.

However, Takayuki Nagai, a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, and Tetsuuro Nishino, a professor at the Department Informatics, bring up an interesting point about how there's a future featuring a role reversal - robots teaching humans about the depths of human nature. Granted, of course, that future is far, far away. For now, these two researchers are focused on implements trial-and-error learning and object association techniques within robots, and eventually naturally languages in aim to connect humans and robots via words.

The field of robotics certainly can bring up interesting points about human nature. Why are we so hungry to create human-like robots? Aren't humans already enough?

Source: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-intelligent-robots-human.html