Good Essay On Human-Robot Interactions

Sherry Turkle researched on the authenticity in the age of digital companions. Computers have become the nearest companions of children since their invention. Programs used like the Joseph Weizenbaum’s computer program Eliza has been shown to have strong emotional effect to the users. However, the use the program at some point was considered immoral since it did not understand the human story told and could not show human care. This is because empathy, love, care, etc. that are attributes of humans cannot be applied in human-robot interaction. It has been shown that children who grow up using computational toys tend to classify computers as “sort of alive” due to the intelligence attached to them. Although artificial intelligence is devoid of human feelings, the effects it has on the emotions are real.
The relationship between humans and robots has taken an interesting twist. The use of robots in Japan to take care of the elderly is somewhat very fascinating and encouraging. It is evidently clear that children who grow using computational toys get an emotional attachment to it, though devoid of human touch and that can be disastrous in their development if not checked.
The mobile devices have undergone a process of anthropomorphization turning into quasi-social robots and becoming increasingly incorporated into human body making the people powerful but, vulnerable. Focus group interviews were conducted on a demographically homogenous group. The respondents indicated that they develop emotional attachment to the contents stored in the mobile devices. Those who had developed a close emotional attachment to their mobile devices tended to need for connection and autonomy in a pronounced way. This scenario show how humans have emotional attachment to robots.
The relationship between a human and a mobile device seems to take unfound trend. The results indicated that people develop emotional attachments to the mobile device that influence the way they relate to each other. It would be interesting to find more concrete data on the extent to which these emotional attachments to robots influence behavioral patterns of the people.