Android Robots - New Ash


An android robot is an humanoid robot, synthetic organism, designed to look and act like humans. Android robots would be great to have, but not for all settings and situations. That's just how I personally feel. In the series we watched in class the New Ash had a lot of bells and whistles, but he did not have enough history in him according to Martha. The sentences formed by New Ash were all generated from anything he has ever said online. There is an upside and downside to that though. He may be able to have a conversation with Martha, but he has no feelings. He also does not have the knowledge the explicit things that he did not express on the web. Because he could not fully make her comfortable, she really wanted to get rid of him.

Although android robots have a lot of humanlike features, they do and do not have the same abilities as a human. An android can go forever without breathing, eating, blinking, blood, and more. Because androids don't do some humanly things, they could really freak out the public. The way that they move and speak is very different from the way a human. When an androids moves, its body lags before making a full motion, and you can easily tell it is a robot from afar. Some androids speak fluently, but others speak with one tone and makes a few sudden pauses when speaking. Because androids are so close to looking the exactly like a human, they are "weird". New Ash would fall in a category called the "uncanny valley" because he is very similar to a human.

I noticed that New Ash started to make his own decisions in the series when Martha began to him and she asked, "Why aren't you hitting me back?". He quickly replied, "I wouldn't do that". Notice Martha did not tell him that Ash would never hit her. I think New Ash is starting to learn a lot on is own, and he could possibly become his own person. Also near the end of the episode when Martha wanted him to jump to his death, New Ash began to manipulate her once he figured that Ash would be afraid to jump to his death. New Ash was not created to have innate feelings that are the same as humans, but as he his put into different situations he is learning more and more how to become more human. If an android bot is around other humans for a long enough time, I feel like they will be able to live a normal human life because they learn to be human very rapidly.