Why do the robots behave like humans in this series?

I feel like you're kind of just looking for problems. It's what the author wanted, so that's how it is. Also, the original story was Astro Boy, which kind of made manga popular, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

That’s the point of the story, the robots in the anime have already gained emotional qualities by reflecting (mirroring) on the personalities of human beings. Their final evolution to the full human experience is by gaining emotions like hatred, sorrow grief etc which is a theme throughout the anime

@PapaMeatScepter That's what they're telling us, but not showing us. Even if robots start to imitate humans, there should still be difference between humans and robots.

We have characters like Brando, Hercules do stupid things that even humans won't do in their circumstance, that'll take me out of the story.

You can't even tell which character is robot and which is human unless the show points it out to you tbh. And the way the story depicts its characters is pretty old-schooled and cartoonic, e.g

- Characters screaming when they fight, even robots? Wut?
- Robots doing completely illogical and dumb stuff like fighting alone, hiding crucial info, etc

I find it hard to empathize with the robots in general. I'm only on episode 3 but--
Like I watched brando shove his head into another robot and then pilot that robot, so how much of brando really needs to be there for it to be considered brando?
cant he just pilot a robot body remotely? cant he just back up his memories and code somewhere else. We see that they can just swap memories with each other, so why not?.

I feel like death to a robot just doesnt compare to death to a human...

then i also have questions like, wouldnt robots be able to create robots who can kill? Can robots kill indirectly, like can they hire someone to kill a person?

@ComboSmooth I never really consider the story to be actual sci-fi, with robots shows emotion without any scientific reason, we just have to believe that they are evolving somehow just like humans, so what you are saying would shift the story more toward the sci-fi part.

The whole point of the story is the robots acts more human than the humans themselves, which i think it fits the Urasawa style. Tbh I don’t think its masterpiece story but better than most of the new gen anime/manga I have seen.

The original story, where Osamu Tezuka, who was the creator of most current manga genre, decided to make human-like robots, was written in the 60s, literally 60 years ago. This reinterpretation was made 20 years ago, even before mobile phones had touch screens. You really can't criticize old sci fi because back then it was impossible to predict how technology would evolve. If anything, I think the parts in which Pluto's author decided to change things, like a musician being against AI generated "art" (this time being it music instead of drawings), are really well thought for a story from 20 years ago.

@ComboSmooth I never really consider the story to be actual sci-fi, with robots shows emotion without any scientific reason, we just have to believe that they are evolving somehow just like humans, so what you are saying would shift the story more toward the sci-fi part.

The whole point of the story is the robots acts more human than the humans themselves, which i think it fits the Urasawa style. Tbh I don’t think its masterpiece story but better than most of the new gen anime/manga I have seen.

@VMPL they haven’t started to imitate humans, they’ve been doing so prior to the occurrence of the events of the story Aka post Central Asian War. Brando and Hercules do stupid shit because they’ve evolved since then, adopting families living lives etc. Which is why you can’t tell the difference between the 7 robots and humans and this is constantly reiterated throughout the story

It’s not like all the robots in the story act like humans, but only the 7, Brau, Pluto, Abullah and Roosevelt. Rest of the robots have begun to experience human emotions but haven’t reached that level of emotional intelligence yet (again if you look at the other robots in the story)

I’d advise you to rewatch the show again, like monster it’s the type of show that warrants a rewatch if you want to get the juice of the experience

@VMPL You are assuming and projecting that emotional AGI would behave in an analogous way to that kind of people. The truth is that there is absolutely no way to know now, and it is important to be humble about the fact that both your and my predictions are highly likely to be way off-track if you simply take a look back at how unpredictable technology has been for the last 100 years. Just take a dive into what people in the 50's thought the modern world would look like, for example. I believe you are simply more accustomed to those super-rational depictions in other media without accounting for how far into the future this show is making guesses on how AI might develop years (maybe decades) after they have become sentient to the point they've been granted rights. The story is about a fictional scenario in which AI does indeed evolve in this particular way and it's repercussions; they are not simply machines anymore, down to the simplest most basic iterations of them.

@nishant0 As long as we don't count Isekai trash that airs every season then we have Vivy which did this way better and with way smaller budget just 2 years ago. If Pluto is a masterpiece, what the hell is Vivy?

True AI doesn't exist yet, so the current answer is no. And this is not just your regular, 10-years-from-now AI, but much further into the future.

Not trying to be rude here, but you thinking that YOU have the correct answer is extremely arrogant when even experts on the field admit that there's absoultely no way to make such predictions. It very surface-level criticism.

This show is just a what-if scenario, after all.

If you ask me, it is rather weird that those character depictions are what you're having issues with, when there's a TON more illogical and incongruent aspects to the story setting; aside from the one I already mentioned about child robots, there's also the fact that there's no economic incentive for companies to delve into robot-making when said robots are given rights and autonomy the very moment they are turned on, and therefore can't even be sold in the market. They are integrated into society just like humans and not tools; they have jobs, families, responsabilities and yet there are companies burning through their own money to make them, altruistically? I could list a dozen more but I don't want to bore you.

@VMPL I didn’t say it’s masterpiece (but better than most of new gen anime) and I haven’t seen vivy, so idk what it did better but as i said earlier, I don’t even consider it a proper sci fi anime, it is more like a fantasy of a scientific theme. The robots will never acts like humans the way it shown in the anime, as i read in some article ‘AI won’t replace Humans, but humans with AI will replace humans without AI’, so the anime is fantasy of author coz what is shown in the anime is entirely unrealistic idea and not the future of AI.

@nishant0 My problem is that the show doesn't even follow its all rules sometimes. They keep trying to tell me that robots and humans are becoming so similar, then they give us humans who act like NPC and MC robots that act more human than them. Their idea would only work if the humans in the show are shown to be complex.

@asherkolars How am I looking for problems if everything is on the surface? Do you have a more thought-out answer?

@VMPL you're literally nitpicking on what the author wanted back then, it's pretty obvious as to why robots act like humans it's a troupe that's been used for such a long time and contemplates the morality of humans and robots.

this is a stupid reply man

@Animaticide Well, the story never goes into those so I don't want to criticize them given the rabid fans here, usually it's best to criticize things which are shown more.

I want to pry further into your thought process. Why is AI not a logical being? Have you watched the game between the top Dota teams vs OpenAI?

I've watched many podcasts with the experts whom you just mentioned. Sure they don't know how AI will evolve, but they all say the same thing is that AI is much better than humans at processing information and making the right logical decision.

I'd like to explore this but I need examples to go by. One thing I will say is by this point in the story, robots have evolved to a point where they do have visceral reactions to things that are personal. They don't all quite know it's happening until after it happens. Despite the visceral reaction, it doesn't translate into an expression of what would be called an emotion. So the last piece for them is to imitate the expected expression to the visceral reaction until it becomes self-fulfilling and something humans can identify or can be used to identify (you) as human. So with that being said, what did Hercule or Brando do that was stupid for a robot or a person that I guess doesn't fall under the story beats that I explained?

Feel like this type of criticism apply far more to Vivy than Pluto. There you could see AI performing stuff they weren't programmed through "the power of music and love". But here? The world and explanation are reasonable. Only criticism I can kinda agree is the fact that some humans behave like robots. The real flaw is that this author, though very knowledgeable with its theme and storytelling, does struggle to create natural dialogue. Definitely one of my gripes from Monster as well.

which human acted like an npc?

@Nanashi86 But does having a visceral reaction shut down a person's ability to think? Why can't they think logically when they're robots? I felt the plot forces them to act stupid rather than them being stupid tbh.

@cassieDmonkey All of the human polices & detectives, United of Thracia's president, Duncan (music composer), anti-robot cult leader, Dr. Hoftman

Human characters with a bit more complexity are Dr. Ochanomizu and Dr. Tenma, that's it. The robots make a huge part of the cast that they shadow most of the human characters. The consequence is that you have a story which questions "What if robots become human-like?", despite having robot characters that are already more human than most of the humans.

Imo, Ghost in the shells: SAC handled this way better, there are only 2 major full-cyborgs characters (Major and Kuze) throughout the story, which makes these 2 stand out a lot more and lets other less-robotic characters be a foil for them.

Hell, even Nier Automata the anime, as boring as it was, handled this better. Despite all of the characters being "you know what", they made a point to make a part of the cast distinct from the other while share some similarity that makes you question which one is human, which one is robot the whole time.