It’s All In Your (Theory of the) Mind Posted by The Situationist
Staff on July 13, 2008 Story by Anne-Marie Tobin, from Canadian
Press. * * * Can robots and computers take the place of a human
being? Two new studies involving research on brain activity in
humans provide some food for thought in the evolving debate
about interactions between man and machine – and in both cases,
people seem to prefer people. German scientists used an MRI
scanner to see how the brain reacted when subjects thought they
were playing a game against four different opponents – a laptop
computer, a functional robot with no human shape except for
artificial hands, a robot with a humanlike shape and another
person. The 20 participants were also asked about their
enjoyment levels after playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game,
which is similar to the Rock Paper Scissors game. “We were
interested in what’s going on in the brain when you play an
interaction game when you need to think what your opponent is
thinking,” said Soren Krach, a psychol