There are many new keywords emerging in the technology industry these days, such as the 4th industrial era, robots, and Artificial Intelligence. Robots these days are sometimes seen positively in the media, such as in Disney’s 2015 film “Big Hero,” which deals with the warm friendship between robots and humans. The healing robot Baymax is upgraded to a superhero by humans to prevent the city from being destroyed. Furthermore, in the movie, Baymax saves the life of the whole city by sacrificing itself.

However, in addition to the actual factory production robots, robots such as Baymax do not penetrate our homes, yet in the real world cleaning robots powered by AI are gaining popularity. Present robots are only restrained only to simple tasks that don’t require complex comprehensions. 

In the Netflix Emmy Award-winning animation “Love, Death + Robots'', robots and AI are not portrayed as optimistically as “Big Hero.” Many episodes have the theme that domestic cleaning robots will become ubiquitous, but their owners might have something to fear. The story is that the cleaning robot attacks the owner and tries to kill him due to the malfunctioning of Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, the cleaning robot killed its owners without any emotion or personality. The robots have no affection for their masters. 

As shown in this movie, the robot’s malfunction leading to a rebellion is the concern that all the people have as the robot and AI technologies are developing. They are concerned about robots harming their lives, and replacing their jobs. The important thing to think about here is, in a few years, robots will become ubiquitous and start to live with us in earnest relationships. The constant presence of robots in our homes will force us to interact with them. What kind of relationship can robots have with personalities and emotions? The technology to sense and measure human emotions, information delivery technology, and robots’ emotional expression technology have begun to be actively studied in both engineering and humanities.

I truly believe that it is time to focus on studying the personality of robots so that they can be designed with various customized profiles centered on users rather than robots as just emotionless tools in industrial sites. That will allow users to form relationships with their robots, and not see them as mere objects. This well-balanced research will create robots with personalities that will contribute to making our social atmosphere warmer and further our interests beyond just a convenient life.

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