If a squat, cardboard-framed robot with a high-pitched voice started asking you questions, would you answer it? Would you share your troubles? Unload your concerns?
Many people would -- at least, that's what roboticist and artist Alex Reben has found. He unleashed the smiling bot Boxie in the halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to see what people would share with a robot. His work and other research suggest we're not so averse to bearing our souls to the bots. In some cases, we'll even tell them things we wouldn't admit to each other.
In fact, Reben suggests robots and dogs aren't so different.
"Dogs are basically a human invention. They're a technology," Reben told HuffPost Live. "We've bred them to be companions over millennia, just like we're designing robots, we've designed dogs to be companions."
Want to learn more about human-robot interaction? Reben, Stanford University professor Dr. Clifford Nass, robotics designer David Hanson, and HuffPost's Executive Tech Editor Bianca Bosker, sat down with HuffPost Live producer/host Abby Huntsman to discuss robots with humanlike qualities -- and their role in our future.
Watch the full segment above. Plus, join the discussion by leaving your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
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