Photos

Attendees look at Pepper the humanoid robot, developed by SoftBank Group Corp., during the Pepper World 2016 event in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

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Every year the Bloomberg Visual Media team battle it out to find the ‘best of the best’ photo for the year, and every year it is a long drawn out and rather heated discussion and process! Every image is chosen for the broader collection with a great deal of care. However the criteria as to why we choose any of the single images is often mixed.

This year however, the best image of the year was relatively easy to pick. As a gauge I often use the formula of ‘how much discussion’ an image creates, compounded by ‘where the discussion leads’ as the barometer for success, and our choice this year certainly hit both of those measures high on the tipping scales.

First off, this image by Tomohiro Ohsumi in Tokyo, seems to be a simple photograph of Pepper the lovable humanoid robot surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. It is a great illustration of our tech coverage. On second, third and fourth looks however you note a million other things that evoke some deep and actually quite disturbing questions within us. The image creates many more questions than it answers. For example,

Is the vulnerability in Pepper’s face genuine?
Are we designing things to fool ourselves?
Is he really interacting with us or just gathering data?
If he is just gathering data, how will that be used in the future?
Why does the company who built Pepper describe it as a he?
Since AI is our future and there is no escaping that, just how much can we really trust little Pepper?

So for me, this image truly illustrates the ability for our content to illustrate depth of coverage. It’s more than just a picture. It’s a conversation.

Congratulations to photographer Tomohiro Ohsumi on achieving the Bloomberg Best Image for 2016.

Natasha Cholerton-Brown