this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Fuck AI
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To a certain degree, the 'human' form is indeed optimal for two legged motion.
https://www.futurobots.com/humanoid-robot-proportions-engineering-design/
Additionally, giving the robot features of a human-like face makes it easier for people to interact with them.
Not really. You run into the uncanny valley phenomenon if you make them too human like.
I think The Culture by Iain Banks has a good way for robots to show emotion. They use color instead. Make sure the colors are standard and it will work fine.
That's why I wrote "features of a human-like face" (like Q3PO in Star Wars), not a look-alike copy with "skin" (like Data in Star Treck NG or the one in the article).
Hey, don't you dare speaking bad about my childhood friend. Data is a treasure and I love him!
AND HE'S FULLY FUNCTIONAL!!! 😭
I like him either. For the lack of examples, he's just the first example of an android with skin that came into my mind. Yet, despite he's a robot, he's probably too sympathic to trigger the uncanny valley phenomenon.
After thinking about that for a while, Zuck might have been the better example.
Yeah he creeps me out.
Arguable, it's an evolutionary oddity that we developed bipedalism and it turned out to be somewhat beneficial for survival and we are the only ones who walk vertically.
Bipedal motion has been far more successful in birds than in any other group and it's form has actually evolved independently several times since the dinosaurs. So, arguably, horizontal posture with femurs in an angle seem far more optimal, stable, energy efficient at passive balance, etc. Or, as a friend in biology used to say, “old birds don't fall when standing on the ground”, unlike old people who are at a higher risk of falling when muscle mass and coordination starts to wear off.
Since humans are minimal energy optimized, but birds have been found not to be while still being more optimal than humans at certain things. There should be a theoretical bird shaped bipedal model that is far more energy optimal than human proportions for biped locomotion.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1571302/
I'm too scared, but thanks