The human factor: Japan’s hyper-realistic androids breach the digital divide

The idea of human-like robots have always been the stuff of tech legend. The theme of robots acting as humans and containing a consciousness, a concept that is still abstract to us and science, has been explored in the narratives of many books, movies and games (A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Bicentennial Man, I Robot, Terminator) and is no longer a subject of fiction, but now a concern of reality.

Until now, the attempt to create such androids has been rather disappointing. Yet now, in Japan, there are android news reader robots (via Inquirer) that have a scarily uncanny similarity of the human form and likeness. These droids are so human-like that it would take extreme scrutiny before one will be able to realise that these aren’t human beings. They look, talk and they act like humans, if our genetic makeup was 10% wax.

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