Learning to be human with sociable robots

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This essay examines the debate over the status of sociable robots and relational artifacts through the prism of our relationship to television. In their work on human-technology relations, Cynthia Breazeal and Sherry Turkle have staked out starkly different assessments. Breazeal’s work on sociable robots suggests that these technological artifacts will be human helpmates and sociable companions. Sherry Turkle argues that such relational artifacts seduce us into simulated relationships with technological others that largely serve to exploit our emotional vulnerabilities and undermine authentic human relationships. Drawing on an analysis of the television as our first relational artifact and on the AMC television show <jats:italic>Humans</jats:italic>, this essay argues that in order to intervene in this debate we need a multimediated theory of technology that situates our technical artifacts in the domestic realm and examines their impact on those populations especially impacted by such technologies, including women, children, and the elderly. It is only then that we will be able to take the full measure of the impact of such sociable technologies on our being human.</jats:p>

Constructing What Counts as Human at Work: Enigma, Emotion, and Error in Connective Labor

“…First, adult humans could lose their empathy, compassion, or other human feelings for other people, as a muscle might thin with disuse (Christakis, 2019). In one vision, people would begin to prefer their relations with AI agents or robots, as they would lose their patience for human frailty that stands out in contrast, such as being messy or chaotic, unreliable or demanding in turn (Turkle, 2011;Weiss, 2020); this resembles arguments Hochschild (2003) makes about how commodified care promises to get rid of the ambivalence characteristic of non-market relations. Or, because people can wholly dominate the other when the other is a machine, such relations promote dehumanizing, controlling practices and beliefs that may extend to human others, and that pose ethical questions in any case (Richardson, 2015).…”

Digital Intimacy in China and Japan

“…From the interest in the "informational" connotation where the data processed were the most relevant elements in the analysis of digital technologies (Floridi, 2014), now the development focuses on the relation digital technologies have to our emotions. For example, digital technologies become more bodily related by being "always-on," mounted on us, and intimate (Bell et al, 2003;Fredette et al, 2012), and they are so intimate it is possible to think of people having sexual intercourse with and through digital technologies like in the case of sex robots and teledildonics (Behrendt, 2020;Levy, 2009;Liberati, 2018c;Mackenzie, 2018;Sparrow, 2019Sparrow, , 2020Rigotti, 2020;Weiss, 2020;Fosch-Villaronga & Poulsen, 2020;Liberati, 2017Liberati, , 2020Balistreri, 2018). However, even if these technologies are clearly becoming intertwined with our intimate life, their effects on our society are not clear, and it is not clear also the framework we can use to analyze these effects.…”