Pepper plays a hooker

Every family has it’s own catch phrases, in-jokes, code words, and “just us” vocabulary.

With my husband, there was “yabaddyanget” (something that was scrawled by a professor on one of Jim’s college papers; when he asked the professor to interpret it for him, Jim was told “this is about as bad as you can get”); this professor was at Rutgers, which we always referred to as Rutabaga (long story). Jim and I also had shopping lady (you know one when you see one); Pêche à la Frog (from the old Peter Cook – Dudley Moore skit: code for terrible restaurant); and “stinks like brownies.” (One more crummy thing about widowhood… Although, come to think of it, my sisters have adopted “stinks like brownies,” so I’ll still have that.)

For me and my sibs, the very long list includes “gayyahaddy” (translation: get the hell out of here, as shouted by someone for whom English was a second language, to my father and his friends who were bothering that someone for whom English was a second language); “bum hockies” (bad feet); “It’s only your mother”; and whistling La Vie en Rose under your breath.

Which brings me to “Pepper Plays A Hooker”, which is what my sister Trish and I always say when we see someone wearing something that vaguely resembles an outfit that Pepper Anderson (i.e., Angie Dickinson) wore in one of the many Police Woman episodes in which Pepper went underground as a hooker.

All this long and winding road gets me to the point of this blog, which is that a Japanese company has recently introduced a robot named Pepper which is supposedly capable of reading human emotions. Which, of course, Pepper Anderson was exceedingly skilled at back in the day when she was playing a hooker.

Not that the new Japanese robot is a hooker. Not yet, anyway.

I read about Pepper a few weeks ago, on boston.com, in an article that borrowed from the  BBC:

It uses an "emotional engine" and a cloud-based artificial intelligence system that allows it to analyse gestures, expressions and voice tones.

The firm said people could communicate with it "just like they would with friends and family" and it could perform various tasks.

Well, I suppose it won’t be all that long before Pepper is sharing catch phrases, in-jokes, code words, and “just us” vocabulary with its friends and family.

Pepper’s being positioned – by Softbank Telecom – as a friendly-priced (less than $2K) household item that will “function as a pet robot,” and will be available sometime next year. In the meantime, it will be hanging out in Softbank retail outlets, chilling with the customers.

Reacting to Pepper, Tech Crunch invokes the singularity (which I so hope not to be around for), with writer John Biggs quite usefully pointing out that:

…it’s important to understand who will soon be changing our diapers, bringing us whiskey, and eventually enslaving us under a totalitarian robot rule.

That would be Pepper.

Which (who?) you can see here: Pepper, not playing a hooker.

Pepper will be in Softbank stores in February and should be for sale later next year. Why do you need one? Given that it’s not quite strong enough to lift you out of bed nor smart enough (yet) to do your shopping, I suspect this will be an Aibo-like toy for the time being. Soon, however, Pepper will dance its way into our homes, hearts, and, perhaps, down our throats and into our chest cavities. The future, as they say, is so bright we gotta run from the robots. (Source: Tech Crunch)

The folks at Softbank are, apparently, not familiar with our Pepper Anderson as, in their parlance, Pepper is a he. As in:

Pepper is a humanoid robot that takes his surroundings into consideration to react pro-actively using proprietary algorithms. Pepper also comes equipped with capabilities and an interface that enables communication with people, including the latest voice recognition technology, superior joint technology to realize graceful gestures, and emotion recognition that analyzes expressions and voice tones. With these technologies, people can enjoy communicating with Pepper in a natural way, just like they would with friends and family. In addition, Pepper can make jokes, dance and amuse people thanks to a wide variety of entertainment capabilities… (Source: Softbank)

The good folks at Softbank – assuming that their CEO is still human and not yet a robot – don’t believe that there’s anything to fear here. (Paranoia about the singularity, be damned!). They look Pepper as the embodiment of their corporate philosophy:

‘Information Revolution – Happiness for everyone.’ To realize our vision, we have made a new entry into the robot business with the aim of developing affectionate robots that make people smile.

An affectionate robot?

Personally, for me “happiness for everyone” is something I like to think of as human, or at least living-breathing. And I prefer my affection coming from humans and dogs. Not to mention my in-jokes and catch phrases.

It looks like we’ll be safe for a while, however, from the weird faux “affection” of robots, as their battery life is a scant 12 hours. Even if “they” figure out family in-jokes, they’ll still run down a lot faster than the average member of my posse.

Pepper plays a hooker, indeed.