human-machine interaction

# human-machine interaction **Entity class:** Concept or analytic term **Collections:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] · [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] ## Definition **human-machine interaction** is a concept or analytic term. [[wiki/Walt Disney Imagineering|Walt Disney Imagineering]] is identified with the research domain **human-machine interaction**. The entry centers on the concept's meaning, practical use, and boundaries, together with the examples that make the distinction operational rather than merely verbal. ## Relationships  This entry is routed through [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] and [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. Its source context is developed in [[articles/The Magic Kingdom and the Managed State|The Magic Kingdom and the Managed State]] and [[articles/The Next Interface Layer|The Next Interface Layer]]. Status-qualified source edges are preserved in the terminal Research Edges section. ### Technology and research relationships - [[wiki/Walt Disney Imagineering|Walt Disney Imagineering]] is identified with the research domain **human-machine interaction**.  - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Research Edges  #### Interface and soft-sovereignty graph patch — 2026-09-10 **Collections:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] · [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] **Relationship source:** [[research/Interface and Soft Sovereignty Ecosystem Relationship Graph - 2026-09-10|Interface and Soft Sovereignty Ecosystem Relationship Graph — 2026-09-10]] **Related source articles:** [[articles/The Next Interface Layer|The Next Interface Layer]] · [[articles/The Magic Kingdom and the Managed State|The Magic Kingdom and the Managed State]] #### Incoming typed edges - **Edge 12 — [[wiki/Walt Disney Imagineering|Walt Disney Imagineering]] `research_domain` → this entry** — **CORPUS_V**; evidence `CORPUS_MAGIC`.  ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “The human has evolved to anthropomorphize. We are on the brink of creating machines so "sociable" in appearance that they will push our evolutionary buttons to treat them as kindred.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *“Turkle’s Law of Human Vulnerability to An Active Gaze,” Edge Annual Question, 2004* [[reminders/AI Control/Human Beings Are Prone to Treat Social Machines as Kindred by Sherry Turkle|Human Beings Are Prone to Treat Social Machines as Kindred by Sherry Turkle]] > “In 2008, in another experiment, we saw that a monkey on a treadmill could control the real-time walking patterns a humanoid robot via a brain-machine interface directly implanted into its brain. The synchronized robot was in Japan, while the poor monkey was located thousands of miles away, in the US. Even after it stopped walking, the monkey was able to sustain locomotion of the synchronized robot for a few minutes—just by using the visual feedback transmitted from Japan plus his own "thoughts" (whatever that may turn out to be).” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Neural Interfaces/A Monkey Can Embody a Robot Through a Brain Interface by Thomas Metzinger|A Monkey Can Embody a Robot Through a Brain Interface by Thomas Metzinger]] > “Artificial intelligence and robotics too will show many new developments. But this is probably advances in the second category since a lot of the real news about the role of automation will occur behind the scenes, where technology will make some tasks we already do simpler or more effective or where technology will replace workers and reduce or at the very least dramatically change the nature of employment. We’ll read about drones and medical robotics and advances in AI but those factory robots won’t be big news, except to the families who find themselves on unemployment lines and perhaps for a few days on the business pages.” > **— Lisa Randall**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/AI Control/AI Breakthroughs Become Invisible Infrastructure by Lisa Randall|AI Breakthroughs Become Invisible Infrastructure by Lisa Randall]] > “In the future, many people will choose to do so; we will all have personalized, searchable databases at our commands. Rapid advances in brain prostheses mean that soon we will be able to access those databases simply by the power of thought. Within a couple decades, the information will be beamed back in a form the brain can interpret—we will be able to hear the playback in much the manner that deaf people can now hear the world with cochlear implants. Vision is slightly more difficult but it too will be reverse engineered. That will undoubtedly give space exploration a tremendous boost. Earthbound scientists will be able to "inhabit" robotic explorers on other worlds, and any interested participant will be able to log on passively to experience the adventure. Humans will venture into space physically as well but at first that will happen primarily for sport, I expect.” > **— Corey S. Powell**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Neural Interfaces/Brain Prostheses Could Make the Internet Directly Accessible to Thought by Corey S. Powell|Brain Prostheses Could Make the Internet Directly Accessible to Thought by Corey S. Powell]] > “In cultural terms, old questions about machine intelligence has given way to a question not about the machines but about us: What kind of relationships is it appropriate to have with a machine? It is significant that this question has become relevant in a day-to-day sense during a period of unprecedented human redefinition through genomics and psychopharmacology, fields that along with robotics, encourage us to ask not only whether machines will be able to think like people, but whether people have always thought like machines.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Can You Have an Artificial Intelligence by Sherry Turkle|Can You Have an Artificial Intelligence by Sherry Turkle]] > “My optimism about skeuomorphs arises, as optimism often does, from former pessimism. I grew up with Alan Turing's unsettling vision of a future machine indistinguishable from a human in its reactions. Ray Kurzweil's provocative prediction of the impending 'singularity'—the point when computer intelligence would start to leave humans gasping in its intellectual wake—added to my fears. I actually began to worry that efforts to enculture my children with Shakespeare and Darwin, and even with spiritual and moral values, might be rendered peremptorily redundant by cold robotic Übermenschen.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Children May Adapt to Machine Intelligence Better Than Their Parents by Timothy Taylor|Children May Adapt to Machine Intelligence Better Than Their Parents by Timothy Taylor]] > “What could a neuron "want"? The energy and raw materials it needs to thrive–just like its unicellular eukaryote ancestors and more distant cousins, the bacteria and archaea. Neurons are robots; they are certainly not conscious in any rich sense–remember, they are eukaryotic cells, akin to yeast cells or fungi. If individual neurons are conscious then so is athlete’s foot. But neurons are, like these mindless but intentional cousins, highly competent agents in a life-or-death struggle, not in the environment between your toes, but in the demanding environment of the brain, where the victories go to those cells that can network more effectively, contribute to more influential trends at the virtual machine levels where large-scale human purposes and urges are discernible.” > **— Daniel C. Dennett**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Competition in the Brain by Daniel C. Dennett|Competition in the Brain by Daniel C. Dennett]] > “Over the past few years, a raft of classic challenges in artificial intelligence which had stood unsolved for decades were conquered, almost without warning, through an approach long disparaged by AI purists for its "statistical" flavor: it's essentially about learning probability distributions from large volumes of data, rather than examining humans' problem-solving techniques and attempting to encode them in executable form. The formidable tasks it has solved range from object classification and speech recognition, to generating descriptive captions for photos and synthesizing images in the style of famous artists—even guiding robots to perform tasks for which they were never programmed!” > **— David Dalrymple**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Differentiable Programming Is Rewriting Artificial Intelligence by David Dalrymple|Differentiable Programming Is Rewriting Artificial Intelligence by David Dalrymple]] > “The search so far has been met only by a great silence, but as astronomers continue their hunt for intelligent neighbors, computer scientists are determined to create them. Artificial intelligence research has been underway for decades and a few AIs have arguably already passed the Turing Test. Apply the exponential logic of Moore’s Law and the arrival of strong AI in the next few decades seems inevitable. We will have robots smart enough to talk to, and so emotionally appealing that people will demand the right to marry them.” > **— Paul Saffo**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Discovery or Creation of Non-human Intelligence Cures Humankind's Existential Loneliness by Paul Saffo|Discovery or Creation of Non-human Intelligence Cures Humankind's Existential Loneliness by Paul Saffo]] > “We will build driverless cars and they will come with a moral compass—literally. The same will be true of our robot companions. They’ll have values and will necessarily be moral machines and ethical automata, whose morals and ethics are engineered by us. “The Trolley Problem” is a gedankenexperiment for our age, shining a bright light on the complexities of engineering our new world of humans and machines.” > **— Daniel Rockmore**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Driverless Cars Will Force Us to Engineer Machine Morality by Daniel Rockmore|Driverless Cars Will Force Us to Engineer Machine Morality by Daniel Rockmore]] > “I work on the question of evolution, not as it exists in Nature, but as a formal system which enables open-ended learning. Can we understand the process in enough detail to simulate the progress of biological complexity in pure software or electronics? A phenomena has appeared in many of my laboratory's experiments in learning across many different domains like game playing and robots. We have dubbed it a "Mediocre Stable State." It is an unexpected systematic equilibrium, where a collection of sub-optimal agents act together to prevent further progress. In dynamical systems, the MSS hides within cycles of forgetting that which has been already been learned.” > **— Jordan Pollack**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack|Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack]] > “A free ai, like the free commons of the web, would feed commerce and science like no other force I can imagine, and would pay for itself in no time. Until recently, conventional wisdom held that supercomputers would first host this artificial mind, and then perhaps we'd get mini-ones at home, or add them to the heads of our personal robots. They would be bounded entities. We would know where our thoughts ended and theirs began.” > **— Kevin Kelly**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Free AI Could Become a Distributed Mind Without Clear Boundaries by Kevin Kelly|Free AI Could Become a Distributed Mind Without Clear Boundaries by Kevin Kelly]] > “What makes immersive 3D virtual environments the perfect medium for learning basic math skills is not that they are created digitally on computers. Nor is it that they are the medium of highly seductive videogames. Rather, it is because they provide a means for simulating the real world we live in, and out of which mathematics arises, and of doing so in a way that brings out and confronts the player (i.e., learner) with the underlying mathematical structure of our world. If Euclid were alive today, this is how he would teach math.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Immersive Simulation Can Make Mathematical Structure Visible by Keith Devlin|Immersive Simulation Can Make Mathematical Structure Visible by Keith Devlin]] > “I have a predictive sketch for how intelligent machines might arrive. My definition of a robot is any device—controlled by software—interacting with the physical world. An economically viable robot is such a system that earns a consistent return on investment (ROI). The ATM, the ink-jet printer, and the disk drive are today's omnipresent robots, they just don't appear as the robots of science fiction.” > **— Jordan Pollack**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Intelligent Machines May Emerge from Economically Viable Robots by Jordan Pollack|Intelligent Machines May Emerge from Economically Viable Robots by Jordan Pollack]] > “The same neural machinery that enables us (if we so choose) to imagine the emotional or physical pain suffered by another also allows us to predict how our current choices will influence our future selves. This is known as prospection. But humans are also lazy; we make choices now that we come to regret later. (I’m guilty of that right now: rather than actually building our future robot overlords, I’m daydreaming about them instead.) Machines could help us here too. Imagine neural implants that can directly stimulate the pain and pleasure centers of the brain. Such a device could make you feel sick before your first bite into that bacon cheeseburger rather than after you’ve finished it. A passive aggressive comment to a colleague or loved one would result in an immediate fillip to the inside of the skull.” > **— Joshua Bongard**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Neural Interfaces/Neural Implants Could Make Future Consequences Felt Now by Joshua Bongard|Neural Implants Could Make Future Consequences Felt Now by Joshua Bongard]] > “Many recent press stories have worried that smarter robots will take away too many jobs from people. What worries me most right now is that we will not find a way to make our robots smart enough quickly enough to take up the slack in all the jobs we will need them to do over the next few decades. If we fail to build better robots soon then our standard of living and our life spans are at risk.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Not Enough Robots by Rodney A. Brooks|Not Enough Robots by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “Since I work in building autonomous humanoid robots reporters always ask me what will happen when the robots get really smart. Will they decide that we (us, people) are useless and stupid and take over the world from us? I have recently come to realize that this will never happen. Because there won't be any us (people) for them (pure robots) to take over from.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/AI Control/People Are Morphing into Machines by Rodney A. Brooks|People Are Morphing into Machines by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “We are already have unmanned planes that can shoot live targets. We are seeing land robots, for both military and space applications. We are seeing networked robots performing functions in collaboration. I fear that we will see a massive increase in the deployment and quality of military robotics, and that this will lead to a perception that war is cheaper, in human terms. This, in turn, will lead democracies in general, and the United States in particular, to imagine that there are cheap wars, and to overcome the newly-learned reticence over war that we learned so dearly in Iraq.” > **— Yochai Benkler**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Recombinations of the Near Possible by Yochai Benkler|Recombinations of the Near Possible by Yochai Benkler]] > “The woman's sense of being understood is based on the ability of computational objects like Paro to convince their users that they are in a relationship. I call these creatures (some virtual, some physical robots) "relational artifacts." Their ability to inspire relationship is not based on their intelligence or consciousness, but on their ability to push certain "Darwinian" buttons in people (making eye contact, for example) that make people respond as though they were in relationship. For me, relational artifacts are the new uncanny in our computer culture — as Freud once put it, the long familiar taking a form that is strangely unfamiliar. As such, they confront us with new questions.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Relational Robots Can Make Simulation Feel Natural by Sherry Turkle|Relational Robots Can Make Simulation Feel Natural by Sherry Turkle]] > “For a long time, putting hope in artificial intelligence or robots has expressed an enduring technological optimism, a belief that as things go wrong, science will go right. In a complicated world, robots have always seemed like calling in the cavalry. Robots save lives in war zones; in operating rooms; they can function in deep space, in the desert, in the sea, wherever the human body would be in danger. But in the pursuit of artificial companionship, we are not looking for the feats of the cavalry but the benefits of simple salvations.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Robot Companions Express Our Technological Optimism by Sherry Turkle|Robot Companions Express Our Technological Optimism by Sherry Turkle]] > “In the 1960s through the 1980s, researchers in artificial intelligence took part in what we might call the classical "great AI debates" where the central question was whether machines could be "really" intelligent. This classical debate was essentialist; the new relational objects tend to enable researchers and their public to sidestep such arguments about what is inherent in the computer. Instead, the new objects depend on what people attribute to them; they shift the focus to what the objects evoke in us. When we are asked to care for an object (the robot Kismet, the plaything Furby), when the cared-for object thrives and offers us its attention and concern, people are moved to experience that object as intelligent. Beyond this, they feel a connection to it. So the question here is not to enter a debate about whether relational objects "really" have emotions, but to reflect on a series of issues having to do with what relational artifacts evoke in the user.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Robots Become Intelligent When People Form Relationships with Them by Sherry Turkle|Robots Become Intelligent When People Form Relationships with Them by Sherry Turkle]] > “The penalties of continuing to graduate cultural illiterates (in science and the humanities) may not be evident in year 2000 Wall Street, but it is troubling the leaders of our economic success, the CEO’s of major corporations who see a grim future in our workforce. Can we continue to import educated workers? As the low-level service jobs continue to give way to robots and computers, the needs are increasingly for workers who have high level reasoning skills, which a proper education can supply to the vast majority of students.” > **— Leon M. Lederman**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/Existential Risk/Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe by Leon M. Lederman|Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe by Leon M. Lederman]] > “Who eventually survives will be largely driven by understanding and applying digital and life code, by creating robots and nanomaterials, by working inconceivably large data sets and upgrading our brains. Meanwhile many U.S. leaders proudly proclaim no evolution and little knowledge of science. They reflect a core of scared voters experiencing massive disruption and declining wages; that core fears elite education, science, immigrants, open borders, and above all rapid change. As income and knowledge gaps widen, many fall further and further behind; many grow to hate an open, knowledge driven economy. Change is rejected, blocked, vilified.” > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez|Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez]] > “Just about every aspect of the passive input-output model is thus false. We are not cognitive couch potatoes so much as proactive predictavores, forever trying to stay one step ahead of the incoming waves of sensory stimulation. Keeping this in mind will help us to design better experiments, build better robots, and appreciate the deep continuities binding life and mind.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/AI Control/The Input-output Model of Perception and Action by Andy Clark|The Input-output Model of Perception and Action by Andy Clark]] > “The robotic moment will bring us to the question we must ask of every technology: does it serve our human purposes, a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. When we connect with the robots of the future, we will tell and they will remember. But have they listened? Have we been "heard" in a way that matters? Will we no longer care?” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/AI Control/The Robotic Moment by Sherry Turkle|The Robotic Moment by Sherry Turkle]] > “Headquarters are a problem in many organizations and systems, where they represent an irrational bottleneck in the free flow of information. Be it the CEO of organizations, the CPU of computers or the conscious self control of human beings, the idea of every bit going through the center, is not functional. Building computers, robots and networks has taught us the need for parallel processing.” > **— Tor Nørretranders**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Now?”* [[reminders/AI Control/The Vulnerability of Headquarters by Tor Nørretranders|The Vulnerability of Headquarters by Tor Nørretranders]] > “If we don't drown, how will we cope? If we somehow learn to swim in the rising tide of the infosphere, that will entail that we–that is to say, our grandchildren and their grandchildren–become very very different from our recent ancestors. What will "we" be like? (Some years ago, Doug Hofstadter wrote a wonderful piece, " In 2093, Just Who Will Be We?" in which he imagines robots being created to have "human" values, robots that gradually take over the social roles of our biological descendants, who become stupider and less concerned with the things we value. If we could secure the welfare of just one of these groups, our children or our brainchildren, which group would we care about the most, with which group would we identify?)” > **— Daniel C. Dennett**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/AI Control/There Aren't Enough Minds to House the Population Explosion of Memes by Daniel C. Dennett|There Aren't Enough Minds to House the Population Explosion of Memes by Daniel C. Dennett]] > “Artificial intelligence researchers came along later but they too could not easily part from medieval thinking. The most important problems to tackle were agreed to be those that represented our "highest" abilities. Solve them and everything else would be easy. As a result, we have ended up with computer programs that can play chess as well as a grandmaster. But unfortunately we have none that can make a robot walk as well as a 2-year old, yet alone run like a cat. The really hard problems turn out to be those that we share with "lower" animals.” > **— Alun Anderson**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Why Are Humans Smarter Than Other Animals by Alun Anderson|Why Are Humans Smarter Than Other Animals by Alun Anderson]] > “What will time with artifacts that simulate the emotional experience of being with another person do to our human capacity to handle the surely rougher, more frictional, and demanding human intimacies on offer?” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Identity/Can Simulated Intimacy Change Human Relationships by Sherry Turkle|Can Simulated Intimacy Change Human Relationships by Sherry Turkle]] > “What will happen to human love when we can design the perfect robot lover?” > **— Kurt Gray**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Identity/What Happens to Love When We Can Design a Robot Lover by Kurt Gray|What Happens to Love When We Can Design a Robot Lover by Kurt Gray]]