Humans Abusing Sad Robots Subject of New Study

It's been a staple of science-fiction ever since robots were introduced in the 1920 play R.U.R. that they would one day replace humans in the workforce. Robots have become more commonplace in our daily lives and automation has indeed replaced humans in a variety of jobs in recent decades so it is noteworthy that this week saw robots actually lose their jobs to humans. The retail chain Walmart has reportedly laid off 500 robots it's been using as in-store stock-checkers. Walmart said it's observed during the pandemic that humans can yield similar results to the six-foot-tall roving robots the retailer has been using to scan its stores' shelves since 2015. Walmart announced Monday that it was ending its contract with Bossa Nova Robotics, which prompted the latter to lay off roughly 50% of its staff. (Walmart will continue to use robotics in other aspects of its business, such as floor-cleaning.) As reported by the Wall Street Journal, "Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful, said people familiar with the situation. As more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup because of Covid-19 concerns, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles frequently to collect online orders, gleaning new data on inventory problems, said some of these people." The paper also cites sources claiming, "Walmart U.S. chief executive John Furner has concerns about how shoppers react to seeing a robot working in a store." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=saddest-robot-deaths&captions=true"] Human responses to robots have been the subject of many studies, including a recent one that found people wanting androids to look human -- to a point. Now, a new study by researchers at the Interactive Machines Group at Yale University sheds light on the human mistreatment of robots -- and what it actually reveals about people. The purpose of the study was to see whether people would intervene if they saw someone being abusive to a robot, which would then express an emotional response to its mistreatment. According to the Wall Street Journal, researchers, "set up its experiment to see if humans would show more empathy if bystander robots expressed sadness over the mistreatment of their fellow robot, Cozmo. The diminutive, commercial android is mobile, verbal and conveys unhappiness with a downcast and droopy facial expression worthy of Pixar." Basically, they wanted to see how people would respond if others made WALL-E sad so the study used robots that could express sadness instead of having no response at all. For the purposes of the study, one human involved in it was instructed ahead of time to mistreat the robot when it made a mistake. "Nine out of 15 people strongly intervened in response to the abuse when the bystander robots expressed sadness. Only three out of 15 intervened when the other robots didn’t react," according to the Journal. "Of those that intervened, most admonished the attacker verbally, while one participant went even further, taking the robot off the table." One scientist said the value of this field of study is less about robots and more about what it reveals about human beings. "How we treat machines is a lens into who we are,” said computer scientist and the University of Southern California professor Maja Mataric. “Why do people feel that they have carte blanche to behave in cruel ways…which we see all the time on social media? The goal is not to build better robots, but to build better robots that make us better people.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/revealed-your-top-5-giant-robots-mechs-power-ranking"] For more science news, read up on the evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward, a cosmic cloud that has some people claiming "Galactus is coming!", NASA's discovery of water on the moon, a black widow star that's a source of gamma radiation, the frightening 50-50 chance that we really are living in a simulation, and a rogue planet that's flying through the Milky Way.