A Robot to Keep Granny Company Represents Failure, Not Progress

An aged-care home in Melbourne has provided residents with a companion robot in a bid to ease loneliness.

If the experiment is successful, they hope to roll similar robots out across the state.

Robot developer Andromeda boasts that the humanoid recognises people, understands emotions and can make friends.

Or, as I like to say, the algorithms are powerful.

Company founder Grace Brown claims the machine helps to cover the fact that 60 percent of people in aged care never receive visits from friends or family.

She said of the company’s pre-programmed automation …

"People see her as a grandchild, they don't see a robot.”

The Nine newsreaders were all smiles and laughter. Amazing! And I suppose it is amazing, provided you don’t think about it.

Honestly, I wasn’t amused or intrigued. The story just made me sad.

Are we really replacing the wonder of grandchildren with the novelty of robots? That hardly sounds like progress to me.

And it begs the question, have we made robots more human-like, or have we made ourselves more machine like?

It is true that we are machines - wonderfully complex ones. But it is also true that there is, as they say, a ghost in the machine. There is an immaterial part of you and I that makes us distinctly human.

I’ll just come out and say it. You and I are flesh and blood, but we are also spirit. And to deny that we are spiritual beings is to deny our very essence.

As Francis Bacon wrote …

“We are akin to to the beasts in our bodies, but if we be not akin to God in our spirit then we are miserable and wretched creatures indeed”

A robot provides the illusion of connection and the mimicry of friendship. But it’s smoke and mirrors. Trickery. Counterfeit.

I see three dangers in this well-intentioned plan to provide robot companions in place of humans.

First, there is the danger that we will come to accept the fact that 60 percent of elderly people are completely cut off from family, and use the robots to assuage our guilt.

No need to visit grandma. She has an android!

Shame on us.

Second, in normalising relationships with robots, there is the danger that we come to think of ourselves - and others - as mere machines.

This would only serve to further undermine the sanctity of life and human rights already under threat.

Do we really want to be reduced to machines that serve no higher purpose?

And do you really trust a State that regards you as a mere machine?

I see this development as the demotion of humans rather than the elevation of robots.

Finally, many vulnerable people will prefer robotic relationships to real ones since relationships with pre-programmed machines are far easier and less challenging than actual relationships.

Already Microsoft has successfully created AI programs that mimic romantic relationships - programs that are increasingly being taken up by Chinese young people who prefer them to the real world.

Since almost all character development happens in the context of relationships, artificial relationships will only serve to develop artificial character. We are ensuring perpetual immaturity in our young people.

So there you go. That’s my take on this new technology.

A robot to keep granny company is not progressive, it’s insulting - and not just to granny, but to us all.