Could love robots ease loneliness?

OK, so maybe we’re talking less Austin Powers Fembot, and a little more AI — that synth-kid loved Mommy so much.

We haven’t yet arrived at Data’s level of sentience, but we’re way past robotic surgery. Robotic technology is racing forward. Serious conversation about its role in society, both of function and ethic, is overdue.

The latest treatise in the Journal of Medical Ethics suggests that in this age of increasing loneliness, especially among the aged, robots could fill an important gap of human companionship. Even, should the owner (can we say owner?) want it, the physical variety.

University of Washington School of Medicine’s bioethics professor Nancy Jecker writes that the current U.S. market for, um, “companionship” robots (yes, remarkably realistic ones already exist) is geared to the wrong demographic. Young American males don’t need bots as much as increasingly lonely senior citizens do, says Dr. Jecker.

And we can’t blame that on the pandemic. Forty-three percent of Americans 60 and older reported feeling lonely before it started, according to research published in February 2020 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Many lonely seniors would value a robot’s companionship and, yes, even its ability to provide sexual gratification, believes Jecker, who has spent years studying older adults.

“We apply ageist attitudes and negative stereotypes to older adults. We assume they’re too old to indulge in sex and think that older adults having interest in sex is weird or dirty,” Jecker said in a UW statement.

“We have similar attitudes toward people with disabilities, where most research has focused on protecting them from able-bodied sexual predators instead of considering their needs and desires as human beings.”

Robotics could also address other needs, made obvious by the “help wanted” sign apparently permanently displayed at most assisted living facilities. Fewer care workers to help dependent older adults, many of whom are physically disabled, coupled with booming populations of 65 and older has reached a critical point.

Whatever the robot’s purpose, Jecker says it could be done with dignity and respect, and that society needs to shift its understanding away from stereotypes and make “reasonable efforts to help them.”

Western cultures tend to see physical relationships narrowly as an expression of lust, overlooking health elements such as basic affection and comfort. Simply getting older doesn’t change the latter a whit, and for some not even the former. Yet most inventions aimed at seniors focus on physical health, largely ignoring social and emotional fulfillment — which, as so many other studies have indicated, have an impact on physical health in turn.

Jecker says thinking of only one function for bots ignores the whole spectrum of human needs, and that some seniors may welcome a companion that can provide both social interaction and some kind of physical affection.

Robot “friends” are more accepted in Japan, where many believe a form of spirit can evolve from both animate and inanimate things. That could be why Japanese culture quickly warmed to the notion of robot companions, in people and pet form.

“They are much more open to the possibility of pet robots and friend robots,” writes Jecker. “They've been at the forefront of not just the technology but the humanities questions of ‘How should we design these robots? What sort of social relationships would you want to have with them?’ They don’t share the Western roboticists’ worry that robots are mechanical empty things that we can’t relate to.”

Read Jecker’s paper at Bit.ly/3nF1kHO.

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network who might consider a robot kitty when she can’t clean a catbox anymore. Contact her Sholeh@cdapress.com.