On Tuesday, February 19, Cody L. and I presents Diegosan. Diegosan is a robotic toddler that was created to simulate they way in which children, specifically one year-old children, learn to interact with other humans through emotions. Diegosan is able to create multiple facial expressions and has 44 pneumatic joints.
I presented the con side to this technology. In order to study how one year-old children learn to interact with the world, other children will need to be involved in this study. I am concerned with this because there is an uncertainty of the psychological effects the study will have on the children. I am also very confused with how a one year-old child's learning can be simulated by this robot. If we do not know how they learn, how can we create something that learns like a child. Looking into the future, this technology could be used as a companion for only children and children with different mental syndromes like Autism or Aspergers. The psychological effect of this are unknown and have a very bad potential in my opinion. In the quotes within the prezi, Turkle shows how humans begin to bond with robots and lose a separation of interacting with humans and robots.
I thought this presentation was very interesting and a good way to start discussion about everyone's thoughts on robots. It made me think of Turkle's ending chapter called "Necessary Conversations", where she gives her thoughts on robots in a similar context. She says "... I tend to object to the relevance of a robot's 'numbers' for thinking about emotion because of something humans have that robots don't; a human body and a human life. Living in our bodies sets our human 'numbers'. Our emotions are tied to a developmental path- from childhood dependence to greater independence- and we experience the traces of our earlier dependencies in later fantasies, wishes, and fears."
ReplyDeleteAlthough robots may be able to mimic humans in some ways, they are not humans and do not possess a human body or brain.
The main reason for the development of this robot was the possibilities for advances in several fields. These include research, sociology, psychology, physiology, and therapy. When a child has Autism, they must follow a certain daily pattern to remain stable. This can be very daunting for any caregivers. So with this robot, it can give the child that pattern that it needs and when it is seem is appropriate, it will slowly introduce a new pattern or behavior and allow the child to slowly acclimate to this new behavior. Also this can be used as therapy for those who have forms of Social Anxiety Disorder. Dr. Buchanan also mentioned that this could be used to improve parenting and to train people with Aspergers to recognize different facial responses.
ReplyDeleteTurkle would support in this technology because of the fact that it allows members of the population to express their feelings in a positive way, similar to the case with Milo in the garden.
The problem with this idea of having the robot learn while the child also learns is that the child ages while the robot doesn't. Even if this technology progresses to actually become a caretaker of children, odds are it will most likely be used for the opposite: the parents will care for the children while a robot does the housework. Either way results in a dependence on technology but also if this is extremely popularized I think Rosen would agree that it would lead to narcissism having people waited on hand and foot by a robot that never says no. It could also lead to a high level of paranoia and social avoidance.
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