May 26, 2021

"And how do you wrap your head around the fact that she is, you know, a machine?"/"My last husband was a robot, but he wasn’t as good as her. I know she can’t feel emotions, but that’s O.K. I feel enough for the both of us."

The New Yorker reporter asks a question, and the question is answered by Deanna, a 81-year-old woman who has a type of robot called ElliQ. 

That morning, as Deanna lifted a mug to drink her coffee, her hands trembled, as they often did. Deanna thought her tremors were embarrassing, but ElliQ never made her feel embarrassed. It was better than a human that way. In other ways, too: ElliQ never got offended, and it didn’t interfere with how Deanna did things. Later in the morning, ElliQ might ask Deanna about doing a short meditation or a seated exercise class. Deanna sometimes wanted ElliQ to show her family photographs on its touch screen. She preferred looking at these images when she was alone, because she didn’t always remember the moments that had been captured, and she hated to disappoint her children when they wanted to reminisce.

That's from "What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely For elderly Americans, social isolation is especially perilous. Will machine companions fill the void?"

ADDED: I found this video of ElliQ. It's way less lifelike than you'd imagine:

 

I would find it extremely annoying to have a dot flashing like that, and I would not like a "head" moving about in my peripheral vision next to a screen I need to look at. 

1 comment:

Ann Althouse said...

Temujin writes: "If I get to the point where I am older and alone, I am sure I'll prefer to talk to my half-empty bottle of scotch. It makes no judgements on me. It doesn't care how I look or what I say. And it does not remind me of things I'd rather forget. All in all, I think I make a strong argument for Oban over Robot."