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The New New
Robots Have a Diversity Problem
Most social robots today are white, feminine, and subservient. But a few are bucking the trend.
She wants to garden, she has studied the concept of love, and she dreams of pizza. BINA48, as you might guess from her name, is not a human, but a robot. There’s something else that makes BINA48 truly distinct, and it has nothing to do with her predilections for human ephemera. Of the small collection of robo-celebrities making the late-night talk show rounds, BINA48 is the only black-presenting one of the bunch. And as social robots continue to creep into the mainstream, her presence isn’t just increasingly necessary — it’s potentially the linchpin to the development of a more diverse society of robots.
Creating the world’s first and only black humanoid robot was not the impetus for BINA48’s inception. A bodyless bust with a lifelike head and shoulders, BINA48 was manufactured by Hanson Robotics and is owned and operated by the Terasem Movement Foundation, an organization researching the possibility of uploading one’s likeness onto “consciousness software” for afterlife preservation. Designed as a research project, BINA48 gets her personality, appearance, and namesake from Bina Rothblatt, a real human and co-founder of the Terasem Movement, who uploaded hundreds of hours’ worth of her memories, thoughts, and beliefs to give BINA48 her foundation. In other words, the robot’s skin color was happenstance.
“The reason BINA48 ended up being African-American is that she’s based on an African-American woman,” says Bruce Duncan, managing director of Terasem. “We were not actually trying to make BINA48 a spokesperson for all black people.”
Regardless, BINA48 has become an emblem of the issue of representation in A.I., opening up the question of who will be replicated in robot form, and why?
“When we’re building the architecture of our A.I. future, this is the time to make sure it’s healthy and representative and diverse.”
It is well-documented that A.I. programs of all stripes inherit the gender and racial biases of their creators on an algorithmic level, turning…
