Presentation: The Map is Not The Territory

Household robots rely on computer vision to navigate their environment, but a camera does not know what it is looking at. In order to recognise and understand the spaces and objects it encounters, a robot's vision technology needs to learn about its future home. To this end, large datasets of 3D files are assembled into model homes, which of course are unable to represent the complexity of life itself. This gap between models of reality and the lived experience is referred to by scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski as ‘the map is not the territory’. If the map is not the territory, are the datasets the home? This talk by researcher and designer Simone Niquille speaks of the absurd and precarious state of the training datasets of home robots, using them as a way of entering a wider discussion about our future cohabitation with technology.