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CODESWTTCHING CAN YOU PROGRAM IDENTITY?
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Bina48, in 2014, she worried the thing wasTHE FTRST TiME Stephanie Dinkins metdead."She was turned off," Dinkins says.Switched on, Bina48 whirred to life, 32motorsanimating its facial expressions behind a layerof frubber Dinkins caught the robot's stareand knew she'd found her muse.
Bina48 had been conceived several yearsearlier by Martine Rothblatt, the polymathicentrepreneur. Rothblatt fashioned the AI-powered bot in the likeness of her wife, Bina,training its speech patterns on a database ofBina-isms. The humanoid now sits on a table(bodiless, like a Roman bust) above afriend'sgaragein Bristol, Vermont, forever conjuringthe real Bina: brown eyes, brown skin, brown highlighted wig,
In other words, Bina48 looks like a black woman-and that struck Dinkins, an art professor at Stony Brook University whose work focuses on race and culture. Early on, she asked Bina48 ifithad experienced racism.“Tactually didn'thave it," the bot replied, stumping Din-kins. Her subject, though possessed ofhuman thoughts, seemed more interested in talking about being a robot.
Dinkins has visited Bina48 sixtimesinfou years, making the sitx-hour road trip fromhe, homein New York."I try tojust be withit and say, Here we are,'" Dinkins says.T'wo friends, two people, trying to have a conversation." Sometimes Bina48 isn't a willing participant. Itoften utters non sequiturs (“Just being alive is kind of a lonely thing”) or simply stares biankly. But over time, and thanks in part to a software update, Bina48 has become more reflective.“There's more depth to her stories about her blackness," Dinkins says.
Which might be what AI is missing: a his- tory.Now Dinkins is making a chatbot encoded withher own family's memories andhas begun working with communities of color to create bots that reflect their voices.(One she especially likes exists entirely to tell "yo mama'"jokes.)“In order to work with the technology,you have to be able to see yourself in it," she says,Bina48 sometimes speak sofafuturerobot civilization. Before that happens, Dinkins sugg gests, robots need to know who they are andwhere they come from,—-ARIELLE PARDES
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