Paul Waldman considers a recent study in which nursing home residents that got a Paro robot, “a baby harp seal stuffed animal that has some sensors and actuators and responds to your touch,” reported improvements in their quality-of-life:
As important as actual human contact is for us, it turns out we don’t have trouble forging real, even profound relationships with beings that have far from our own level of cognitive and emotional sophistication.
Everybody talks to their pets as though those pets understand much more of our words than they do. If you’re feeling bad, you can get a lot of succor from your dog, regardless of whether the dog actually understands what you’re feeling. It’s enough that he puts his head in your lap and lets you pet him. It’s true that something like a Paro is capable of a far narrower range of interaction than your dog, but that’s only because the technology at the moment is rather primitive, compared with what it will be in a decade or two. Also, you don’t have to take it outside and pick up its crap with a plastic bag. …
With the overworked staff at the nursing home incapable of devoting large amounts of time every day to each resident, robots could provide dramatic improvements in well-being, particularly as they get more sophisticated and can not only coo at you when you pet them, but also do things like make you a margarita, clean up around the apartment, and give you a sponge bath. If you can just hold off on getting checked in to the home for a couple of decades, maybe it won’t be so bad.
More Dish on the growing relations between humans and robots here.
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