Japan's Shinto history makes cultural acceptance of robots much easier
Kate Darling · a16z Podcast | To All the Robots I've Loved Before · Feb 26, 2019 · at 26:26
MIT Media Lab researcher Dr. Kate Darling discusses how Japanese cultural traditions reduce psychological friction when humans attach emotionally to robots.
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“Like in Japan, they have this whole history of Shintoism and treating objects as things with souls, and so it's, I think, easier for them to view robots as just another thing with a soul, and they don't have this contradiction inside themselves of, oh, I'm treating this thing like a living thing, but it's just a machine.”
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