I think loneliness, of course, is one of the major problems we're facing as a species
especially in the West, as we start to get more elderly,
and I think the lack of interaction that we've seen during the pandemic
has revealed just how important this is for us.
There are experiments with deploying robots in care homes,
including in the UK in the NHS, but also in Japan,
where to some extent those robots aim to just fill a gap,
where there is no person present to provide any kind of interaction.
And it has been suggested that we could use AI based machines, robots,
in forms of companion animals perhaps, or human companions or quasi-human companions,
as love or sex robots and companions.
The question is of course, will that do what it is supposed to do?
Will we be less lonely if we have an artificial companion?
The current state of AI technology and companion robots
being used to supplement human interaction for,
often elderly humans or patients, sort of suggests that
we're willing to allow just good enough companionship.
The technology is not, at this stage, advanced enough to
provide the full human-to-human interaction that's possible
when a family member visits an elderly person in a care home,
but robots can provide some elements of that.
It could be helpful, but only if you see it
for what it is, which is essentially a big toy.
Having something to play with when the alternative
is having nothing to play with, that's fine,
but what worries me is if, and when, these robots
are going to be used to replace human contact.
I think it certainly could be something of interest in
the same way as, you know, tackling a difficult puzzle
or doing some other hobby is time consuming,
but in terms of fulfilling the sustenance for
human interaction, I don't believe the
technology could really ever satisfy us that way.
You can't get that much social gratification out of
any kind of artificial system that currently exists.
They can't keep up a conversation.
The best chatbot can keep up maybe five minutes of a conversation
and only written, not spoken, and that means that it will feel fake.
While it may give a particular individual the illusion
that they actually have a relationship with someone,
because we have that instinct in us to assume
consciousness, awareness, in a thing that reacts
and looks as if it were conscious - that is why children like to play with dolls and
stuffed animals - and they develop a kind of relationship to those artificial beings,
but of course there's nothing there
and after a while they also learn that there's nothing there
which also means that there's no true relationship.
And adults also find it easy to project emotions,
feelings, reactions into artificial beings and that's why for a certain while
we may, even though we're still alone,
feel in the company of an artificial being that we're not alone.
But I think we will wise up very quickly and the fact of our being alone doesn't change
because there's no 'there' there. There's no person
at the other end of the relation, so it's not really a relationship at all.
I think it's probably unlikely that humans, or at least most humans,
will form strong emotional attachments to machines
if they can recognize it as a machine.
If of course they're fooled by the artificial intelligence into
thinking that it's sentient, that might be a different issue,
but I think that we naturally have this category of what it is to be human,
something that we learn very early on as babies
and children, and I think that sticks with us,
and although it's possible that maybe in the
future the technology will become indistinguishable
from sentient life, I think at this present
point time it's highly unlikely, and moreover
I think if we know that a machine is a machine,
then we'll have some real resistance to forming emotional attachment.
Well whether relationships with robots can ever be
fully satisfying depends on who you are and what you want.
Some people actually like to be alone.
Some people find it difficult to have relationships with other real people.
Because real people are difficult.
I mean they have their own will, they have their own preferences,
they want to do things that you don't want to do.
They might leave you, they might stop loving you.
All that might be seen as a problem.
So an artificial companion might be the much safer option.
They're not real but at least they don't leave you.
Potentially as AI advances it might provide
something we might think of as perfect companionship,
but I don't necessarily think that friendship is about
getting exactly what you want from the other person.
So there might be such a thing as a too perfect friend or
even in some cases, a too perfect boyfriend or girlfriend,
that actually AI might provide us with an experience that's actually just too good.
We don't like each other just for what's good about
each other, we should also like each other for our flaws
and I'm agnostic about whether AI would ever be able
to present that form of friendship and companionship.