By Alex Mar; originally published on 10.17.17
It is summer 2002, mid-morning in a university research lab on the edge of Osaka, Japan.
Two girls—both dressed in pale yellow, with child-puffy cheeks, black shoulder-length hair, and bangs—stand opposite each other under fluorescent lights.
More precisely: One is a girl, 5 years old; the other is her copy, her android replica.
They are the same size, one modeled on the other, and they are meeting for the first time.
The girl stares hard into the eyes of her counterpart; its expression is stern and stiff. It seems to return her gaze.
A man is videotaping the pair—he is the father of one, creator of the other—and from off-camera he asks, “Would you like to say something?”
The girl turns to him, disoriented. She turns back to the android.
“Talk to her!” he says. “Hello.”
The girl repeats the word, quietly, to her robot-self. It nods.
Her father feeds her another line: “Let’s play.”
The android wiggles its head. Her father chuckles behind the camera. But the girl does not budge. She simply stares at her double, the look on her face one of focus and perhaps concern.
Each member of this pair continues making the barely there gestures that serve, through reflex or ruse, as signs of life: Each blinks at regular intervals; each tilts her head from side to side.
One is processing, in the raw, sensory-overload manner of a human child; the other is performing a series of simple movements made possible by the servomotors installed inside the silicone casing that is its skin.
“Is it difficult to play with her?” the father asks.
His daughter looks to him, then back at the android. Its mouth begins to open and close slightly, like a dying fish. He laughs. “Is she eating something?”
The girl does not respond. She is patient and obedient and listens closely. But something inside is telling her to resist.
“Do you feel strange?” her father asks. Even he must admit that the robot is not entirely believable.
Eventually, after a few long minutes, the girl’s breathing grows heavier, and she announces, “I am so tired.” Then she bursts into tears.
That night, in a house in the suburbs, her father uploads the footage to his laptop for posterity. His name is Hiroshi Ishiguro, and he believes this is the first record of a modern-day android.
