Seika (Japan) (AFP)

The action of Ridley Scott's 1980s cult movie "Blade Runner", with its "replicants" mingling with humans, was in 2019.

Always point of these genetically modified beings with the human appearance which populate this work inspired by the novel "Do androïdes dream of electric sheep?" from Philipp K. Dick.

But the Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who loves very similar humanoid robots, thinks without hesitation that the most extravagant movie screenplays are not so crazy and it's only a matter of time.

"I do not know when a future 'Blade Runner' will come, but I think it will come," he says without blinking at his research center near Osaka in western Japan.

"Every year we develop new technologies," he says, referring in particular to machine learning methods. "Now we focus on intention and desire and whether these can make robots more like humans."

- "Understanding the human" -

"I think robots will become more aware and consciousness is the key to making them more human," said the professor at Osaka University.

Robots have a relatively large presence in Japan, in public places, to prepare noodles or kinesitherapy.

Cyberdyne, a Japanese robotics company that bears the same name as the one in the "Terminator" series that is behind the Skynet computer network destroyer, acts in the field of exoskeletons.

Presented as the first "cyborg" robot, the HAL (hybrid assistive limb) created by Cyberdyne with the Japanese University of Tsukuba and riddled with sensors, helps people in wheelchairs to walk.

"As a researcher, I hope to develop conscious robots like what I see in Blade Runner + to help me understand what it's like to be a human - that's my motivation." .

Western popular culture has played on concerns about the idea of ​​blurring the lines between man and machine.

In "Blade Runner", a policeman played by Harrison Ford spots and kills the replicants who mingle with the people of Los Angeles. The "Terminator" series, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, focuses on a conscious computer network that triggers nuclear destruction and wars the survivors.

- "Controllable risk" -

"I can not understand why Hollywood wants to destroy robots," insists Mr. Ishiguro, "look at Japanese cartoons: robots are friends, we have a completely different cultural environment."

In 2017, a hundred or so heads of robotics or artificial intelligence companies, including billionaire Elon Musk, wrote an open letter to the United Nations to warn of the dangers of autonomous weapons or "killer robots".

Mr. Ishiguro does not see any risk. "We have no reason to fear artificial intelligence or robots, this risk is controllable," he says.

His colleague Takashi Minato sees as an ultimate goal to make them "integrate society as companions".

But will we look like them? In the 1970s, the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori felt that the more robots were similar to humans, the more we found them scary, a phenomenon he called "uncanny valley".

Mr. Ishiguro's first attempt to create a copy of his daughter had melted her into tears in shock. He later improved the prototype by making his movements less jerky.

"We can hope that remote control technologies will allow our alter egos to live a normal life," says Minato about machines.

"Technology is just another way of evolution, we are changing the definition of what it is to be human," says his boss, Hiroshi Ishiguro.

© 2019 AFP