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Ibn Sina robot creates Facebook account, finally bowing to peer pressure

Researchers hope social networking will keep humans from becoming disinterested in the robot once it runs out of tricks.

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Computing | by Samuel Axon | Wed May 6, 2009 4:50PM | 3 comments

In what you've got to assume is a breakdown in willpower amidst peer pressure, a robot modeled after Persian scholar Ibn Sina will be jumping on the social networking bandwagon by joining Facebook and interacting with friends there.

According to researcher Dr. Nikolaus Mavridis and his associates, most people lose interest in robots after a few weeks because they run out of ways to interact. This Facebook project aims to solve that problem by establishing a history of shared experiences and social connections between the robot and its Facebook friends.

Whenever the robot meets a new person in the lab, it will look them up on Facebook and start a conversation based on what information it finds there. Sounds kind of stalkerish if you ask us!

It will also keep its Facebook profile wall busy with updates and communication with friends, and with photos of its human encounters. Would you add this guy, or are you afraid he'd get too spammy with the top fives and quizzes?

This story around the web:

Trusted sources:
external link Robot Comes to Facebook; Everyone Yawns [Mashable!]
external link Robot to create Facebook profile (BBC) [Techmeme]
external link Ibn Sina Robot wants a Facebook page,… [Engadget]
external link BBC NEWS | Technology | Robot to create… [news.bbc.co.uk]

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Comments (3)

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This is shameful! (5:45 PM on Tue Nov 3, 2009)

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is a Persian scholar, not an Arab one. If there isn't any Arab scholar to put his name on your robot, it's your problem!

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Babak (7:07 PM on Thu Nov 5, 2009)

Ibn Sina is also known by the anglicised name Avicenna. He is a Persian and not an Arab (nothing against Arabs, just the facts). Please change the text of your article to reflect the facts. Avicenna is regarded as the father of modern medicine and clinical pharmacology and also regarded for laying the foundations of systematic experimentation- so you can probably see why the creators of the robot named him after him.
Not only was he accomplished in the medical field, he was also a polymath... like Da Vinci.

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Samuel Axon (3:22 PM on Fri Nov 6, 2009)

Correction made. My apologies for the error, and thanks for the heads up.

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Anonymous (7:54 PM on Fri Nov 20, 2009)

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