Google has filed a patent for developing “methods and systems for robot personality development,” which will certainly have the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk quaking in their boots.
The patent outlines an idea which will see personality traits for robots being downloaded from the cloud, in order to “provide states or moods representing transitory conditions of happiness, fear, surprise, perplexion, thoughtfulness, derision and so forth.” I’m glad “anger” isn’t listed among those traits.
According to the patent, those who own a robot with a downloadable personality will be able to travel to a different location, purchase another robot and then download the exact same personality onto the second machine. effectively ensuring that an individual could theoretically create an army of robots, each with the exact same personality. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this all sounds a bit terrifying, but you must also consider how great it would be to have a legion of robot servants. Though be careful how you treat them – if I’ve learned anything from the movies, it’s that if you scorn a robot, it’ll eventually become self-aware, kill you, and then threaten to wipe out the entirety of the human race. No pressure.
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Google explained the downloadable and transferable personality types in the patent, writing: “The personality and state may be shared with other robots so as to clone this robot within another device or devices.
“In this manner, a user may travel to another city, and download within a robot in that city (another “skin”) the personality and state matching the user’s “home location” robot. The robot personality thereby becomes transportable or transferable.”
I can’t imagine Google is planning to incorporate this patent into any tech in the near future, with the company still struggling to introduce augmented reality glasses to the zeitgeist, let alone convince us to welcome humanoids with downloadable personalities into our lives with open arms. In reality, this is likely an example of the company trying to one-up the competition by filing a patent for a technology that seems inevitable, in order to stake their claim on the copyright when the likes of Apple want to put down their smartphones and instead focus upon building the foundations of a dystopian future led by robots.
The concept of downloadable personalities is certainly an intriguing one, though, and begs the question of the problems that could potentially be faced if third-party developers decide to create their own unique personalities, that boast all the warmth and empathy of a T-800. Let’s just hope that these robots remain our friends, rather than realizing that we’re all assholes and the world would be a better place without us.
