At first glance, Jibo looks a bit like Wall-E’s robot girlfriend. Both Jibo, a real robot, and Wall-E’s girlfriend, the fictional Pixar character, have the look of a futuristic Apple product: reflective white plastic, round curves, a black screen for a “face,” and smooth swiveling movements.乍一看，Jibo长得类似于皮克斯动画工作室(Pixar)创作的《机器人总动员》(Wall-E)里那个主人公的女友Eve。Jibo和Eve的外观都极具未来主义范儿，看起来看起来苹果公司(Apple)的产品：平滑的白色塑料外壳，圆润的曲线，一张当作“脸”的黑色屏幕，旋转灵活性。
But Jibo’s raison d’être is slightly more in line with Rosie, the robot maid from the 1960s animated television series The Jetsons, and its operating system is more akin to the one employed by Samantha, the artificially intelligent character from the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her. (One key difference: Jibo is male, according to its makers.)不过从本质上看，Jibo只不过更加像上世纪60年代动画片《摩登家庭》（The Jetsons）里的机器人女佣Rosie。它的操作系统更加类似于2013年斯派克o琼斯的电影《她》(Her)中的虚拟世界人工智能角色Samantha用于的那种。（但根据其制作者讲解，一个关键的区别是，Jibo只不过是个男孩。
）Jibo is described as a “family robot” because it is able to see, hear, speak, learn, and help families with a variety of tasks around the house. It—he?—can “relate” by expressing itself in natural language, using “social and emotive cues so you understand each other better.” Jibo is meant to be a companion.Jibo被称作一款“家庭机器人”，因为它具备看、听得、说道、习等功能，而且可以协助我们腊许多家务活。它（或者说“他”？）可以用于自然语言来传达自己，并且可以“用于社交性和感性的似乎，让你们更佳地解读对方。”总之，Jibo致力于沦为一个居家伙伴。It’s the creation of a team of robot architects, cloud computing engineers, animators, conversational technologists, and human-robot interaction engineers. Jibo, Inc. is backed by $5.59 million in venture funding from investors including Charles River Ventures, Fairhaven Capital Partners, Osage University Partners, and angel backers.它是一群机器人设计师、云计算工程师、动画工程师、不会话技术专家和人机对话工程师的心血之作。
Jibo公司也从查尔斯河风险投资公司（Charles River Ventures）、菲尔海文资本合作公司（Fairhaven Capital Partners）、奥塞治大学合伙公司（Osage University Partners）和天使投资人那里取得了559万美元的融资。So far, people like Jibo. A crowdfunding campaign, launched last month, raked in more than $1.5 million from more than 3,500 people, handily surpassing its $100,000 target. (The Boston-based company does not expect to ship its first units, priced at $499 each, until the 2015 winter holiday season. The crowdfunding campaign is designed to get developers excited about building apps for the robot, it said.)到目前为止，人们都很讨厌Jibo。
上个月Jibo发售了一个众筹项目，迅速就从3500多人那里筹措到了150多万美元，轻而易举地多达了该公司预设的10万美元的目标。（这家总部坐落于波士顿的公司预计，第一批定价为499美元的产品要等到2015年冬的假日季才能上市。该公司回应，发售这个众筹项目是为了唤起软件开发者为Jibo设计应用程序的兴趣。
）Naturally, I had to meet Jibo. Off to a hotel room in Midtown Manhattan, then, where two Jibos and Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, the robot’s creator, awaited me. The robot is not yet fully functioning, it turns out. I watched a prepared demo where Jibo, about a foot tall, turned to look me in the eye. This was disarming at first, as if I was being followed by a security camera. Once he started talking to me, it began to feel more natural—as natural as a robot in a 1980s science fiction movie, anyway. Unlike his lesser robotic peers, or, say, a smartphone, Jibo did not rudely buzz or ding when there was a new message to communicate to me. He politely said, “Excuse me, Erin,” and waited for me to respond before continuing.当然，我也要去闻一下Jibo。在曼哈顿市中心的一家酒店的房间里，两个Jibo机器人和它们的发明者辛西娅o布雷西亚博士正在等着我。
事实证明，Jibo的功能还没充份完备。就在我观赏一段准备好的展示视频时，大约一英尺高的Jibo忽然扭过头来直勾勾地看著我。这种眼神一开始让我实在有点紧绷，样子是被一台安保摄像机盯着。
一旦开始说出，它给人的感觉就大自然多了——最少像80年代科幻片里的机器人一样大自然。和那些自动化程度不高的智能设备比起（比如智能手机），打算向我传送新的信息时，Jibo会举止地“嗡”或“叮”一声，而是不会礼貌地说：“睡觉了，艾林”，然后等我作出反应后，才不会之后说出。
In the room, Jibo showed off his swiveling, spinning and leaning moves to me, along with some of the programs he’ll feature. He ended his performance with a cheesy joke, and his eyes turned to tiny half-moons when he laughed at the punch line.在房间里，Jibo向我展出转动，稍头等动作，以及一些他配备的一些程序。最后他以一个很劲爆的笑话完结了演出。当这个笑点惹得他笑的时候，Jibo眼睛眯成了一个小小的月芽。Jibo can perform a number of functions. He can tell children’s stories and snap family photos using face recognition. He can place Skype calls and handle communications for which you would normally use a phone. Jibo is meant to stay in the home, perched on a table or countertop, and a demo video shows him greeting a single man when he comes home from work and offering to order Chinese takeout. In another scene, Jibo is hanging out while a woman kneads bread. He chimes in to remind her that her daughter is picking her up soon. “Thanks, Jibo,” the woman responds, not unlike Jane Jetson talking to Rosie.Jibo可以构建一些功能，比如给小孩子讲故事、利用面部辨识技术抓拍家庭照片等等。
它也可以用Skype打电话，另外某些必须用手机已完成的通讯也可以通过他来已完成。Jibo是为家庭设计的，它可以放到桌子或工作台上。
在一段展出视频中，当一个男人上班回家时，Jibo立刻向他问候，然后回答他必须不必须叫中餐店内。在另一幕中，一个女人正在揉面。这时Jibo警告她，她的女儿迅速要来相接她出外购物。
那个女人问道：“谢谢你，Jibo。”和《摩登家庭》里珍o杰特森对Rosie所说的话没什么区别。Jibo can be considered the next logical step past today’s “telepresence” robots, which work only by connecting a smartphone or tablet—a brain, if you will—to a mobile base. For example, Romo augments your cell phone with rubber tank treads, though it requires a tablet or another phone to serve as a remote controller. Ubooly is a plush children’s toy in which parents can insert their cell phone for playtime. The Double telepresence robot, essentially an iPad on top of a Segway, allows people to feel physically present in meetings and move around the office when they’re working remotely. It’s a bit like Max Headroom on a broomstick and, to be frank, a little silly in practice.Jibo可以被视作目前的“远程呈现出”机器人的下一步发展方向。
所谓的“远程呈现出”机器人就是把一台手机或平板电脑（也就是机器人的“大脑”）相连到一个移动基座上。比如，Romo无非就是给你的手机加装了一个橡胶“坦克底盘”，而且它还必须另一台平板或手机作为遥控器。Ubooly则是一款儿童玩具，父母可以把他们的手机挂到毛绒玩具的肚子里，让它陪伴孩子玩游戏。
远程呈现出机器人Double，本质上就是把iPad放到一辆赛格威两轮车(Segway)上面，让身处异地的人们实在他们亲自参加会议或在办公室走来走去。它类似于英剧《超级麦克斯》(Max Headroom)里的主人公，但老实说道，实际用于时，它看上去感叹傻咲傻咲的。Jibo works with smartphones, but Breazeal chose to give the robot its own brain, rather than rely on a smartphone. The smartphone would have limited the robot’s capabilities, she says. As it turns out, people don’t like to put their phones into a robot anyway. They prefer to keep it on hand, Breazeal says.Jibo也可以和智能手机一起工作，但布雷西亚要求给与它一个属于自己的大脑，而不是几乎倚赖智能手机。她指出智能手机不会容许它的能力。
事实证明，人们并不讨厌把自己的手机放到一个机器人身上，而是讨厌仍然把手机拿在手上。Whether that can make a difference—or translate to sales of in-home robots—is up for debate, but if anyone can figure this out, it’s Jibo’s inventor. Breazeal has dedicated her career to social robots, starting as a grad student at M.I.T. When she was younger, she didn’t understand why NASA was sending robots to Mars but they still hadn’t arrived in people’s homes. It’s because those robots weren’t designed to be social, she reasoned. Breazeal went on to build the first a social robot, which was called Kismet and intended for children. She has since published numerous studies on social robotics and in 2010 delivered a TED talk on the subject. People respond to human-like robots the same way they respond to people, she argued, and robots with the ability to convey expression increase empathy, engagement, and collaboration among people in a way that a robot with a flat demeanor cannot.目前还不告诉，这到底是不是一个明智的要求，这样做到能否给Jibo带给好销量。但对这个问题最有发言权的人，有可能还是Jibo的发明者布雷西亚。早于在麻省理工学院(MIT)读书时，布雷西亚就把她的整个职业生涯奉献了社交型机器人。
她最初不明白为什么美国国家航空航天局（NASA）可以把机器人送来上火星，却无法把机器人送来入地球上的千家万户。后来她究其根源，实在这是因为机器人在设计上缺少社交性的缘故。后来布雷西亚设计了她的第一款专门针对小孩子的社交机器人Kismet。
从那时起，她公开发表了不计其数的关于社交型机器人的论文。2010年，她还在TED大会上针对这个课题公开发表了一篇演说。她指出，人们不会像跟真人交流一样与仿人型机器人展开交流。
而需要传送感性信号的机器人，可以提升人们的代入感、参与感和协作性，这是缺乏人性化因素的工作机器人所做到将近的。An estimated 3 million service robots, which are intended for personal and domestic use, were sold in 2012, according to the International Federation of Robotics, representing sales of $1.2 billion. The IFR predicts 22 million robots to be sold through 2016.根据国际机器人联合会（International Federation of Robotics）统计资料，2012年，全球共计卖出约300万台家用和个人用途的服务型机器人，销售额约12亿美元。
该的组织预测称之为，到2016年，全球将售出2200万台机器人。Jibo is purposely designed to not resemble a human, Breazeal says. The goal is to create what she calls a humanized experience, “because that’s what empowers people,” she says. Robots that try to look like human beings end up being a little too science fiction.布雷西亚回应，Jibo无意地没设计成人的外型。Jibo的目标是创立她所谓的“拟人体验”，因为她指出：“那才是让人之所以沦为人的东西。
”企图仿效人类外观的机器人不免科幻色彩过于美浓了。Artificial intelligence has certainly been top-of-mind for many Americans, both because of the film Her and ever-present economic fears that robots will make our jobs redundant. A recent New York Times article, “The Future of Robot Caregivers,” sunnily outlined how robots could lighten the burden of caring for aging baby boomers:人工智能毫无疑问是很多美国人耳熟能详的东西，这既纳了电影《她》的福，也是因为很多人仍然担忧机器人不会抢走了我们的饭碗。《纽约时报》(The New York Times)最近刊登的一篇取名为《机器人护士的未来》的文章悲观地回应，机器人护工未来可能会分担起照料“婴儿潮”一代老年人的重任，从而将大大减低我们这一代年轻人的养老压力。“In an ideal world, it would be: Each of us would have at least one kind and fully capable human caregiver to meet our physical and emotional needs as we age. But most of us do not live in an ideal world, and a reliable robot may be better than an unreliable or abusive person, or than no one at all.”“在理想世界里，等我们杨家了，每个人都应当最少有一名心地善良、合格的人类护工来照料我们的身体和精神市场需求。
但我们大多数人并非住在‘理想国’，因此一个可信的机器人很有可能优于一个不可信甚至有折磨偏向的人——更加别说有可能显然没人来照料我们。”In Japan, robots help with a nursing shortage by conversing with patients that have dementia. Similar life-helper robots can be found in Sweden and around Europe, according to the Times.这篇文章声称，在日本，由于护工严重不足，机器人早已分担起了与老年痴呆患者聊天的任务。类似于的护士机器人也经常出现在了瑞典等欧洲国家。
Not everyone welcomes this development. “This how to fail the third machine age,” wrote Zeynep Tufekci, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina’s iSchool, in response to the article.但也并非所有人都青睐这种新进展。对于这篇文章，北卡罗来纳大学(University of North Carolina)信息学院社会学教授泽伊内普o图菲克希撰文对此道：“这是第三个机器时代的告终。”“In my view, warehousing elderly and children—especially children with disabilities—in rooms with machines that keep them busy, when large numbers of humans beings around the world are desperate for jobs that pay a living wage is worse than the Dickensian nightmares of mechanical industrialization, it’s worse than the cold, alienated workplaces depicted by Kafka.”“在我看来，把大量的老人和孩子关口在屋子里——特别是在是有残疾的儿童，然后用机器人陪着他们腊这腊那，而全球大量的人类则忙着去找一份只得糊口的工作，这只不过比狄更斯笔下的机器工业化噩梦更加可怕，比卡夫卡笔下冷漠、亲近的职场更加真是。
”“It’s an abdication of a desire to remain human, to be connected to each other through care, and to take care of each other.”“这相等于退出了对维持人性的渴求，退出了通过关怀来彼此联系，退出了互相照顾。”Tufekci argues that based on unemployment figures, we’re not facing a shortage of caregivers. Rather, she writes, “we’re facing a shortage of caring.”图菲克希指出，从失业数据来看，我们并非面对护工的紧缺。忽略，“我们面对的是缺少关怀。
”Meanwhile, a new study from Pew Research suggests that tech industry influencers are split on whether robots will help or hurt the economy. Just over half of those surveyed believed robots won’t take away more jobs than they create, resulting in a net positive for the economy. However, the other half felt less optimistic about our robotic future.与此同时，皮尤研究中心（Pew Research）的一项新的研究表明，对科技行业有影响力的人们在机器人到底不会增进还是不会伤害国民经济的问题上持有所不同态度。大约半数以上受访者指出，机器人偷走的工作会比它们建构的工作多，因此不会给经济带给正能量。另一半受访者则对与机器人相处的未来深感不过于悲观。
“The other 48%, though, think that robots will displace huge numbers of white and blue collar workers in the next 10 years, which would not only leave people unemployed but which could disrupt social order.”“有48%的受访者指出，未来10年里，机器人将不会代替大量白领和蓝领工人。这不仅不会造成大量人口失业，还不会造成社会失序。”Breazeal contends that Jibo isn’t meant to be a caregiver for aging people or a replacement for human labor. The robots are meant to help older users age independently. “Jibo is about empowerment and helping people do what they want to do and what they need to do,” she says. “Its not about replacing people.”布雷西亚指出，Jibo并不是要沦为老年人的护工，也想代替人力劳动。
研制这些机器人的目的，是为了协助用户需要独立国家面临老年生活。她回应：“Jibo是要流露出能量，协助人们做到他们想要做到、必须做到的事，而不是要代替别人。”“There’s a lot of kneejerk reaction,” she adds. “We’re not trying to create a robot caregiver at all. We’re empowering people to live independently and be emotionally connected to their family, because that’s what matters.”她回应：“有很多人本能地回应赞成。我们并不是要发明者一个机器人护工，而是要让人们需要独立国家生活，在情感上与他们的家庭维持相连，因为这才是最重要的。
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