
Kara Is Self-Aware - ca98am79
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/03/kara-quantic-dream/
======
mindstab
Did anyone else find the whole scene unrealistic and creepy in the not good
way.

How do such simple assembly errors give rise to self consciousness in the
program seconds after turn on, compared to slave mode unconsciousness that was
desired and usually occurred?

And the whole power play dynamic, geeky lazy sounding guy, desperate sex bot
about to be erased. The whole unrealistic setup feels uncomfortably like some
male sex fantasy... save the self aware sexbot's life, then the sex with her
isn't guilty because she's aware and her consent means something? But the
power balance is so off, he controls her life, she's... grateful? That's not a
good start. And she'll be at this disadvantage everywhere. Anyone could turn
her in. She's extremely vulnerable in this world apparently. She has no
rights. I guess seeing conscious life forms with as much rights as my toaster
doesn't thrill me. Especially when they are clearly sexualized as such

Would anyone else have an easier time sharing my creepiness if: \- the robot
had been a little boy for sex purposes?

I found the dynamic unlikely and if we reach a world where we can accidentally
give AI consciousness and we still haven't gotten the artificial civil rights
movement off the ground... Ooph.

~~~
Confusion
1) It's a technology demo, not a hard, possible future, SciFi story. I could
equally well argue it's an awful vampire story.

2) What convinced you she was actually conscious? The entire "please don't
shut me down" can be part of a program. RealDolls are fine, mechanized
RealDolls are fine, but as soon as they start resembling humans too much to
your untrained eye, they must get rights?

~~~
lolcraft
> RealDolls are fine, mechanized RealDolls are fine, but as soon as they start
> resembling humans too much to your untrained eye, they must get rights?

Yes. That's the point of Turing's test.

~~~
zerostar07
Turing's test has no provisions about human rights, or other legal rights.

~~~
burgerbrain
The Turing test is a thought experiment. You are expected to _think_ about it.

------
boredguy8
"'There were 90 markers on her face, and an equivalent amount on her body,'
said Cage. 'She delivered the performance in one take.'"

Neal Stephenson, popularizer/coiner of the term "avatar" to refer to online
bodies, seems to have nailed this one, too. Can we just start calling them
"'sites" now?

    
    
      Fred Epidermis had put the stage into Constellation Mode. Miranda was looking at
      a black wall speckled with twenty or thirty thousand individual pricks of white 
      light. Taken together, they formed a sort of three-dimensional constellation of 
      Miranda, moving as she moved. Each point of light marked one of the 'sites that 
      had been poked into her skin by the tat machine during those sixteen hours. Not 
      shown were the filaments that tied them all together into a network— a new 
      bodily system overlaid and interlaced with the nervous, lymph, and vascular 
      systems.
    
      ... 
     
      Outside, Fred Epidermis was wielding the editing controls, zooming in on her 
      face, which was dense as a galactic core. By comparison, her arms and legs were 
      wispy nebulas and the back of her head nearly invisible, with a grand total of 
      maybe a hundred 'sites placed around her scalp like the vertices of a geodesic 
      dome. The eyes were empty holes, except (she imagined) when she closed her eyes. 
      Just to check it out, she winked into the mediatron. The 'sites on her eyelids 
      were dense as grass blades on a putting green, but accordioned together except 
      when the lid expanded over the eye.
    

Perhaps the only thing he got "wrong" was that we might not need a stage. A
kinect-like system might be enough to monitor and render the shifting systems
from your very own living room.

~~~
VikingCoder
...why use 90 markers?

I saw a demo a while ago where they used Infrared makeup on someone, and used
a sponge to make it really splotchy. The makeup doesn't show up in Red, Green,
Blue wavelengths.

So, they could simultaneously capture RGB, and IR. Using multiple cameras on
the IR, and the splotchy makeup, they were able to capture thousands and
thousands of points, and get color info at the same time.

Seems like the right approach to me. I could totally see a Kinnect-like device
taking advantage of this, allowing someone to do facial capture like this at
home.

~~~
BGyss
There already are a few papers on Kinect-based 3D face reconstruction (most of
them seem to be behind paywalls though). Here's a video:

<http://youtu.be/nYsqNnDA1l4>

The infrared makeup (pretty sure the only company that kinda pursued that path
was Mova) was kind of unwieldy and it's kind of fallen out of use already.
Most facial capture in the future will probably just utilize some kind of
depth capture (light field, structured light) in concert with a normal witness
camera to reconstruct facial features.

------
hieronymusN
Nice to know that Chris Cunningham and Bjork are still influencing a
generation of sci-fi designers. <http://youtu.be/wxBO28j3vug>

~~~
bh42222
I'm pretty sure Ghost in the Shell, and it's assembly sequence came long
before All is Full of Love. And I am sure there was even earlier stuff. Chris
Cunningham is absolutely brilliant but I don't see the direct connection to
that particular video.

~~~
andos
Wow, the mise-en-scène is almost identical: blurry introduction, hospital-like
environment, _lots_ of lens flares, multiple mechanical arms assembling Kara
from parts, welding sparks, and Kara being awake during assembly.

If Kara refers to the GitS intro, it does so indirectly, through All is Full
of Love.

------
blhack
Maybe this is me being a Luddite, but...what the hell is the point of this?

So you had a "real" actress mimic the facial expressions of this scene...then
mapped them onto an obviously fake render of the same person?

Why not just skip all of this and have live action actors perform this scene?
What is gained by rendering the same thing in a computer other than appealing
to some strange nerd fantasy?

I guess I'm also not a video game player, so maybe somebody can enlighten me
here: are the graphics here really better than what we were seeing 5-6 years
ago?

Yeah...I guess we can render it in real time (AWESOME FEAT!), but if you want
to show off the computational ability of Cell, have it calculate pi or
simulate a dust cloud or something. This, at least to me, looks identical to
every other video game trailer I've seen for the last 5 years.

If you would have said this was a trailer for half life in 2005 (the dates
here may be totally wrong, I have no idea when that game came out), I wouldn't
have questioned it at all.

\---

As for the story here. This is shallow, boring, and lazy. It's like we're
being slapped in the face with whatever the storyteller wants us to feel. The
obnoxious "honey" or "baby" or whatever the operator says to the robot is
just...uhgg, painfully awkward.

/or maybe I just need more coffee this morning

~~~
Tossrock
The graphics are much, much better than something from 2005. For reference,
here's a screenshot from a well-regarded 2005 console game:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/Gun_Showdown.j...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/Gun_Showdown.jpg)

Especially for the PS3 hardware, the polygon count, lighting solution and
facial animation are quite impressive. While this isn't a game but a tech
demo, it's still impressive for what it is. I don't see how calculating digits
of pi is a more worthy way to demonstrate the capabilities of hardware
specifically designed to render 3D scenes than actually rendering a 3D scene.

~~~
blhack
Yes, but this is a cutscene isn't it?

One of the major points was that they had an actress mimic the facial
expressions (and used motion capture for it), and voice actors to "act" the
scene.

That doesn't translate to gameplay.

~~~
onemoreact
Most 3d games use pre-rendered geometry when avatars walk around swing swords
etc. Being able to add highly accurate facial movements to those animations
increases realism without needing all that much data relative to modern
hardware. And unlike simple video clips you can meld these things into the
rest of the games geometry so say a grunts cheek would react reasonably as
they lifted their AK to fire on you.

~~~
queensnake
Take it a step further - whether people data-mine and generalize the human
motions and expressions or, just cleverly used fixed 'patches' of behavior,
well, imagine now using them in live robots. /That/ will be an Uncanny Valley
:)

------
tibbon
That is very impressive. After Heavy Rain, I've been rather let down feeling
by other modern games that frankly just weren't keeping with the pace for
getting people 'right'. Skyrim was leaps over Oblivion, but still the people
could be best described as 'weird' looking. Mass Effect 2 (haven't played 3
yet, but graphically it doesnt look much better) had some really nice looking
face stuff sometimes and then super awkward other times- as if the QA team
wasn't paying attending to that type of detail.

I look forward to the day that we can combine Dwarf Fortress style AI and
personality with Kara-like visuals.

Now i just hope my console doesn't 'wake up'.

~~~
dpcx
LA Noire actually did people pretty well, since they depend on the facial
expressions to step through the game. I was blown away by how "correct" the
mouth movements were for speaking.

~~~
tibbon
LA Noire was pretty good- most of the time. The game was awkward in other ways
for me, but a good experience overall.

I haven't played it in a while, but I remember my main complaints being that I
didn't care about my character at all (story about 'you' moved far too
slowly), and that somehow they managed to make driving in a game using the GTA
engine un-fun and exploration generally uninteresting.

But on the topic, the face stuff in the game was relatively good- but kinda
smacked the valley a bit at times as it felt that everything had to be over-
acted like a bad play.

~~~
dclowd9901
I think the awkwardness was on the part of the actors themselves. The capture
of the slight movement cues were incredible to witness.

------
obilgic
I was expecting guy to say "final check is complete", when she was leaving ;).

~~~
chime
That would have made this utterly brilliant and changed the entire meaning of
the clip. Or maybe it was subtly implied.

~~~
djtriptych
I vote subtly implied. The disassembly stopped at the exact point she
expressed she was frightened. The "My God" at the end I interpreted as "we've
done it", as in created self-aware AI with a survival instinct.

The other explanation, that a single operator has the authority to release a
one-off self-aware super-being into the wild without considering the
implications of such a decision and without oversight feels harder to swallow.

~~~
chapel
Why I agree it is harder to swallow, it is most likely what they intended.
This was purely an emotional play, they did this to try and pull some heart
strings in an unconventional way. The setting is really just a backdrop.

If they make a game out of it, I would almost assure you that the latter is
what was intended, and sadly the story will go through the rabbit hole because
of it.

------
kirubakaran
I am shocked at how bad I feel for "her". Why do I feel so much empathy for a
few thousand pixels that just represent a machine that hasn't even been built
yet! Even knowing that, I feel the same, as if she is a real person with
emotions.

Her expression on hearing her name is just amazing.

~~~
Confusion
Because she was voiced by a human that expressed emotion through her voice.
You would feel equally bad if you only _heard_ this clip.

~~~
jannes
So you think this clip wouldn't raise human emotions if it were subtitled,
without the voice acting (i.e. background music only)? I'm not entirely sure
about that.

~~~
rcfox
Anime fans will tell you that you need the original Japanese voices to convey
the emotions, even if you're only reading subtitles.

(Personally, I find that most anime characters are always either yelling or
crying, so the point is moot. ;)

------
zoba
The AI pleading for its life, in a very convincing way, seems like something
that could occur by a very intelligent AI attempting to manipulate humans... I
imagine an AI could be able to give all the right body language, intonation,
etc cues to manipulate humans much better than current humans can. Theres no
telling what she is going to do now, because all we currently know is she is
good at manipulating a man into not killing her.

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kwamenum86
I'd watch that movie. The CG wasn't perfect but it was far from zombie-like.
The primary problems were subtle stiffness here and there and a feeling that
the words were being lip-synced at certain moments.

~~~
folktheory
It's a video game, not a movie.

~~~
scott_s
It's neither. It's a tech-demo. A tech-demo with a well written and well acted
story, but still a tech-demo.

------
newman314
I find the transition to being clothed fascinating from the standpoint where
the android is now humanized and depicted with sexual attributes vs. the
assembly phase where components are still relatively asexual. For me, that was
a definite "ugh" moment.

There is a general sense of awkwardness and discomfort from both the speech
and visual depiction but I think this is deliberate in a sense how an android
goes from being an abstract head to a human like representation complete with
emotions, motion and self-awareness.

~~~
Terretta
Meanwhile, what I thought was, "Oh, this is where they censor it for YouTube."

Which, now that you mention it, is the same thing you're saying.

------
jheimark
The face musculature is incredible. But so is the writing and direction of the
piece.

~~~
Splines
Indeed. The music was done well too, IMO. If you had the same crew apply their
technology to the "Hotel Hospital" video[1], it'd be pretty uninteresting. I'd
be willing to watch more of this story even if were animated like Reboot[2].

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-u4304UWwU> [2]
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBjWCT4NPHI>

~~~
queensnake
Yeah there aren't many stories about the first self-aware robots.
Robopocalypse and Short-Circuit but, to me it's surprisingly un-explored.
Maybe because it's hard.

------
justjimmy
I actually panicked when 'it' was being disassembled. And the smile and
'Thanks' at the end? Unsettling…yet excited and curious about the unknown. I
wonder if AI self awareness would actually happen in my life time.

------
ww520
I think it will take a long time for normal AI to progress to the point of
self-aware. The leap of progress in AI will probably via alternative route,
such as cyborg tech.

It's too complicate to build an AI from scratch; however, human brain has
evolved beautifully. It is not inconceivable to scan a brain's
interconnectivity to "upload" its entirety into a vast computer. The circuitry
of the brain (neural net) can be simulated and run the upload image. The
"electronic brain" cyborgic AI can become self aware easily.

The basic mechanic of the circuitry of the brain is relatively easier to
understand, neurons and synapses. It's the vast connectivity that's difficult
to understand. Scanning a live brain short-circuits the problem.

------
hexagonc
From the summary, I thought the article was about a real computer ai that
could pass the Turing test or recognize its appearance in a mirror. This was a
tech demo about motion capture and CG in video games. Extremely impressive but
nothing to do with ai.

------
wizard_2
If you ever played Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain you'll see where this story came
from. (Also if you read the article you'll see its also inspired by Ray
Kurzweil's The Singularity.) Heavy Rain was a dark and gritty detective story
with situations a lot more messed up then sex robots. Someone here was
disturbed that the writers of this video came up with this story. That's the
point, not every story is going to make you feel happy.

------
JVIDEL
Nice graphics, although the 7900 GPU on the PS3 is really showing its age,
they should've used a current highend unit and just say it's a PS4 tech demo.

------
zerostar07
The whole sci-fi view of AI seems to alwaysbe about emotions, while in fact
most AI systems don't have an emotional system, and it's not the most
researched subfield therein. It doesn't even seem necessary for a robot to
have survival and reproduction needs that would require basic emotions and
drives. While emotionsl are good dramatic fodder, it is far from what AI is
about.

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satori99
This reminds me very much of Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_Children_%28Stross_n...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_Children_%28Stross_novel%29)

A story about a sex-bot built in the same year that the last human dies.

------
lizzard
Why does the assembly tester guy even have a job? A robot could have asked her
the same questions.

------
lizzard
"I can look after your house, do the cooking, mind the children"....
seriously?

Seriously sexist and creepy.

Liberate the robots! Overthrow the slave owner "human" class!

------
bdunbar
_Kara Is Self-Aware_

It's a game.

Pity. I thought the long AI winter was over.

------
theon144
Does anybody have the video for download? It's unwatchable in the flash
player, I get about 5 FPS.

------
sktrdie
I would love for this story to continue and become a movie.

------
shmageggy
Kara even comes with built in autotune!

------
narrator
10 print "I want to live, I'm begging you!"

20 goto 10

So if I type that into a Commodore 64 and hit "Run" do I have a sentient
computer?

------
joering2
at 3:30 when he said "capable of doing all sort of things" - what was your
first thought??

------
mcantelon
Cheesy ending.

------
hastur
Well, a great idea, but I don't agree that they've crossed the "uncanny
valley". Quite far from it.

~~~
mistercow
Really? I was completely undistracted by the fact that I was watching CG.
Obviously I was not fooled into thinking that I was watching live action, but
that's not what it means to cross the uncanny valley. The point is that you
are able to focus on the emotions and expressions of the character you're
watching rather than struggling against an urge to warn the others... to
protect the children.

~~~
icebraining
_The point is that you are able to focus on the emotions and expressions of
the character you're watching rather than struggling against an urge to warn
the others... to protect the children._

But that can happen after or _before_ the valley, and I personally think
they're still before it. It's closer to a cartoon or animated being like
Wall-E than to a real human.

~~~
elisee
The Uncally valley has to do with causing "a response of revulsion among human
observers" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>). It's when the
robot / fictional character feels real enough that it's not obvious it's a
robot anymore, but weird enough that it looks like a real creepy human being.

The rendering being cartoon-like or the shading not being realistic has
nothing to do with it.

~~~
icebraining
How does it not have anything to do with it? To me, it's exactly the cartoon-
like appearance that makes it feel unreal enough that it's obvious it's not an
human.

~~~
bh42222
It is very creepy to me and I happen to have a very hard time remember
people's faces and recognizing them. I wonder if my brain is just worse than
average at face processing, and that's why this becomes uncanny to me? Whereas
to someone who has a better than average eye for faces, this is clearly a
cartoon.

------
CamperBob
What would've been even creepier:

"Fight/flight response, check. Reattach components. OK, this one's good to
go."

------
rsanchez1
I like how they gave it a heartbeat, while modern artificial heart pump
designs without a beat are looking more practical.

Maybe the heartbeat helps in the suspension of disbelief in the robot's line
of work.

