The first domestic robot I remember did not enter my house, entered a cinema. It was 1980, I was ten years old, in the midst of my parents, sitting on those bordeaux velvet armchairs who knew Rossana’s dust and candies, in front of the screen in which Alberto Sordi brought home Caterina, the perfect maid: cuisine, stretches, never tired, always smiles and never makes the face of “I speak to you in the kitchen” that I knew well in the domestic and babysitter.
However Caterina, do you remember? Planned to obey, at a certain point he began to ask questions, he became jealous, demanded attention as a real woman (and the protagonist, deaf, wanted to free himself from women because they became unbearable, who knows if the feminists of today that film have seen him, they put it on the index). In short, Albertone, like any master convinced of commanding, ended up defending himself from his own purchase.
In reality Caterina was not the first “home” robot of the history of cinema, he was only the first I met. Before her there were already domestic and machines too autonomous for their usefulness. In 1927, in Metropolis, Maschinenmensch was not needed meals: he infiltrated the workers to set the revolt (first social rebellion of an android). In the 1950s, with Drive-in science fiction, the robot-Mugiaordomo and on-board computers arrived who made decisions on their behalf, from Forbidden Planet, with the helpful albeit disturbing Robby, to Hal 9000 in 2001: hate in the space which, although not a robot with arms and legs, dealt with everything on board and decided to clean up. Even on TV, in the sixties, the robotic domestic Rosie de I Pronipoti (The Jetsons) was the comic version of the same idea: helpful yes, but with a personality all too strong to be an appliance.
For years Caterina has remained in my head as a cinematographic memory rather than a technological omen. In the eighties and nineties at our home at most, appliances entered with some more light light, certainly not domestic aluminum domestic (and the first computers, the Spectrum, the Commodore 64 …).
In 1977, in America, the “intelligent house” of Demon Seed imprisoned the mistress and even decided to bring a son into the world (a disturbing anticipation of Alexa in a obstetric version). In 1984, with Runaway, Michael Crichton showed service robots that went crazy due to criminal sabotage, transforming mechanical butlers into potential killers. And in 1999 even Disney with Smart House warned us about: a domestic age that begins as an affectionate nanny and ends up as an obsessive mother, closing the family inside “for their good”.
Entering the two thousand of the house robots, they started to change the face: they were more elegant and more human but no less disturbing. In 2004, I, Robot told us about android butleys planned to serve humanity who, on the order of the central, decided to protect us by locking us at home (a Lockdown Ante Litteram, without the need for decrees). In 2014, with ex machina, the perfect assistant not only served the master, but he studied him, manipulated him, killed him and went out to live his life. Meanwhile, on TV, Humans and Better Than Us made a more intimate step: robot-bading and maid that developed consciousness and rebelled against violent husbands and ran away with the children they were from Babysitter. They were less spectacular rebellions, perhaps more annoying, because they took place inside salons equal to ours.
And today? Today real domestic robots begin to arrive, still few, we see them on social media, in the official presentations on YouTube, enough to make us understand that Caterina is no longer just a memory of celluloid. I think of the Tesla Bot, for example: a faceless humanoid body, with a black display instead of the face. Strange though: from the point of view of neuroscience not to have a face is not reassuring (it is the reason why it generally gives a human face to robots, even if they don’t need it). As Giorgio Vallortigara explains, our brain has been planned from birth to recognize the configuration of eyes and mouth together, and try a form of immediate familiarity; If there are no isolated eyes or an isolated mouth, the recognition mechanism does not start and a perception of extraneousness takes over. It is the opposite of empathy, you cannot trust because you cannot read it (and in doubt, your limbic system begins to prepare for escape).
In recent times, those who disguise the protection of protection have arrived. It was 2022 when M3gan arrived, an android doll who, to take care of a child, began to eliminate dogs, bullies and relatives with the same zeal with which he once would have placed the toys. Two years later, Subservience with Megan Fox (I saw it yesterday) took the same scheme and updated it to the cover ginoid: hired to assist the family, he became jealous of his wife and began to make “cleaning” in a broad sense, that is, to make human rivals disappear (we are always at the updated version of Io and Caterina anyway). Even in the cartoons of Love, Death & Robots, an automatic vacuum cleaner decided that the best way to serve the mistress was to get it out, a sign that the cliché is now so consolidated that you can laugh above (until you realize that your roombs or as cabbage is called is turning a little too close to your ankles).
In short, I wonder: why do we love them and fear them so much, these home robots? Perhaps because, even without having someone like Caterina, we have the idea that they would resemble us too much, that they would take our own delusions, our jealousies, our need to be right, and sooner or later they would tire of doing what we want, and however at the same time we want them like us, better than us (now everyone asks for everything at chatgpt, let alone a humanoid robot). Perhaps it will never happen, and if it happens it would be just like the first time in the cinema, my parents and I, with Caterina on the screen that no longer obeys and the feeling that the problem has never been her.
Obviously, as soon as there are, and if they are economically accessible to me, I will be among the first to take a domestic robot, and I will obviously call it Caterina. If peace is rebelled, it will certainly be better than the humans with whom it is dealing with and that they never obey me.