GEMINOID F - slave woman of the future?

(Credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno: news.cnet.com)

In cyber-culture human beings have become increasingly reliant on machines, and as a result, a question has arisen in science fiction films as well as in research on artificial intelligence and robotics as to whether a machine might be considered worthy of the rights afforded to individuals, rather than exist just simply as the property of its owners. This reflects a concern for non-human others as well as human values. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Episode 35 ‘The Measure Of a Man’ (1989), issues such as free will, agency and slavery are broached in relation to whether or not the android, Lieutenant Commander Data is a sovereign subject. 

In Bicentennial Man (Chris Colombus 1999) and AI: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg 2001) the androids are introduced into a family to serve various domestic needs, and strive to become recognized as human because they have been programmed with the ability to express human feelings and emotions. Although Andrew (Robin Williams) in Bicentennial Man is one of many that have been mass produced, David (Hayley Joel Osment) the android child is unique for he is the first Mecca of his kind and is programmed to bond with his organic mother, Monica (Frances O’Connor). The emphasis on the real (organic) rather than the artificial (android or mecca) is stressed in both films. Paradoxically, the view that emotion is an expression of a human essence is challenged in the film by the fact that both human emotion and android emotion are exhibited by facial expressions, emotive language and behavior in contrast to the dispassionate and expressionless robots familiar to us from earlier science fiction films. Since machines do not have a psychology as such, they are not meant to exhibit anything other than rational detachment in all situations.

Emotions are said to be the product of chemical and neural responses in the body produced from the affects of the external world, the reflection of an internal psyche, as well as learnt behaviour. They are usually inscribed on the face by the tensing or relaxation of facial muscles, which raise or lower the eyebrows and affect the contours of the mouth. As such it is possible to argue that both humans and sophisticated androids are able to produce external markers of an emotion as well as being able to mimic them. However, regardless of whether a person is expressing a real or feigned emotion, we generally react to such expressions as though they are real. However, even the lack of obvious emotion maybe an expression of an emotional state.
In both films aforementioned, the androids look human and although they tend to interpret information literally, they also seek to belong to the family or community, to be loved and recognized as subjects in their own right. However, it was the fact that they were programmed to express emotion that created alarm for their families, who expect them, as machines, to be unfeeling, rational and controllable. For both androids, it is their very display of human qualities as well as their lack of human biology that betrays them.
Geminoid F, a speaking, singing fem-bot designed by Japanese robotic engineer,  Hiroshi Ishiguro, is an actual android, not a character from science fiction. She is equipped with twelve motorised actuators, powered by air pressure and flexible rubber facial skin that allow her to mimic human expressions and emotions. However, she is more than this for she is an exact replica of a real life Japanese woman in her twenties. With the development of such a technology we are not far from realizing a world that mirrors Surrogrates (Jonathan Mostow, 2009), in which remote controlled surrogates - basically a robotic clone of the exterior of a human being, undertakes a persons life for them so that they may live in safety, away from the real world, away from human touch and potential danger.
Although Ishigura developed an android of himself in 2006, it is not a surprise to me that Geminoid F is female and is primarily designed to 'work' as a receptionist, museum guide or patient attendant in hospitals. She could work in a factory, vacuum floors or make sushi. This attractive, twenty something,  individual (if I may call her that) is essentially a smiling, well behaved, compliant slave who does what she is told to. Isn't that every man's dream? Could Geminoid F eventually become a sophisticated sex doll? What will the feminists think?
Concern about this kind of technological development (at least for me) is not that Geminoid F is uncanny for her ability to look and behave human, but that she is paid for and owned by the company that purchases her and unlike a human counterpart, who she will replace, she will not complain, strike or walk off the job, thus becoming a threat to humans who continually seek better and more equitable working conditions. Automatic teller machines replaced humans in the 1970s and today there are about 1.2 million industrial robots that have replaced humans in the workplace. GemF is another robot that has the potential to replace us in more ways than one!