Why We Name Our Robots

At the BMW plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a collaborative robot was installed to apply insulation to doors. The first of 60, its human coworkers named it, or her, Charlotte. A similar story happened at the Johnson & Johnson plant where employees named their Universal Robots helper Clio.

“The fact that the employees have named the robot says it all,” said a supplier to Johnson & Johnson. But what do these naming conventions really say about our relationship with collaborative robots?

“Some of them have to do with just how similar some inanimate object or animal seems to a person. This can sometimes be an appearance, how it behaves or acts, or any other cues or similarities that lead us to treat nonhuman agents as humanlike,” says psychologist Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

Studies from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that humans put more faith in technology that presents anthropomorphic features like a voice or self-steering. These types of features allow us to connect emotionally with the equipment and make it more likely that we will assign it a human-sounding name. In Epley’s book Mindwise, he notes that robots in particular seem more human when they operate at a speed similar to our own, which collaborative robots generally do.

“When you understand when people think of other agents as mindful,” he notes, “you can both try to explain why people treat nonhumans as humans, but also sometimes why people treat humans as objects.” I will have to ask Siri and Alexa what they think about that.

Have a story about robots in your environment? Comment below with your robot name.