The Medical Futurist, 18 March 2022
Social companion robots are getting increasingly popular, more widely used and accepted. This might have happened anyway, but the pandemic accelerated the pace of their “deployment”. Not so surprising, many social workers have experienced that COVID restrictions took a huge toll on elderly people living alone.
The loneliness of the ageing population is a known phenomenon. A vast amount of research has found that a significant percentage of people above 65 are living alone, and many of them feel lonely and isolated. Also well proven is the fact that loneliness alone is a health risk. Elevated cortisol levels, the physical symptoms caused by the mental strain resulting in more inflammatory diseases, declined immune functions, elevated cardiovascular risks increase mortality as much as would smoking, the lack of exercise or severe obesity.
How to tackle this problem when all social interactions were more or less banned, or at least advised against? Many of the social workers tried to find an answer to this dilemma. Some of them came up with the idea of distributing some kind of robotic companion among their patients. In fact, there were quite a number of initiatives along these lines around the world these past years.
Tabby cat from Joy for all
We have seen the NY programs giving out Joy for all robot pets to people living alone, Canada experimenting with robot-comrades since the 2016 introduction of Ludwig, and some elderly care facilities in Ireland introducing Stevie to their residents. And we could go on and on with the examples of social robots involved in elderly care.
How good is it to have a social robot for your mental health?
The first thing that most likely comes into your mind is that humans need humans to connect with. Trying to substitute personal relationships with a mechanic creature with some form of artificial intelligence must be not right.
Surprisingly though, research after research finds the same thing: a vast number of lonely people with furry robotic pets, or smiling bulky robotic chat partners consistently report an improvement in their well-being. They understand that the companion is a robot, but find their presence relaxing.
This raises some interesting questions.
But hey, they are just fake!
Not surprisingly there are several distinctly different lines of thought about the topic of how to relate to social robots. It ranges from flat-out refusal to optimistic acceptance.
The negative attitude is easy to understand. This is just not real. Robotic pets are not real pets, robotic chat partners are not chat partners, robotic companions are fake. And everyone trying to ease the hardships of lonely ageing people with robots is just trying to get out of society’s responsibility of taking good care of the generation of our grandparents.
If we look at the topic from this angle – many argue – it is painfully obvious how developed (and ageing) societies fail to maintain the necessary interaction among the generations, and how they let down old people living alone.
Stevie helps an elderly patient in Ireland
Are robot companions so much different from pet companions?
But there is another way to look at this, and this is very inspiringly discussed in Kate Darling’s book, the New Breed. Among other topics, the book suggests we could examine our relationship with robots in the light of our relationship with pets.
The argument is clear, and for me, convincing. It says that when we look at elderly people having animal companions (real ones this time), it is obvious that they are not humans, and cannot provide the same kind of connectedness a human relationship does. Despite this, it is also clear that having a beloved pet does good for elderly people. It improves the quality of their lives, and no one ever would think about suggesting to take them away on the basis that they are not the real thing.
We are not worried about pets replacing future human relationships, we see them as supplemental. We might anthropomorphize our pets to some extent, and we may also do the same to our robot companions, but we will never mistake them for a real human.
You could of course argue that real pets are real, and robotic pets are not real. That is true. But for a large number of seniors, having a real pet is not an option. They might have limited mobility, not allowing them to take a dog outside multiple times a day, or clean the cat’s litter box. Maybe they cannot take the responsibility or the financial burden of a living animal. But they do enjoy the furry, realistic-looking creature being around, reacting to their daily routine and offering them interactions.
We can look at it as very sad. Or we can look at social robots as many robot pet owners do: with joy for making days less lonely, less depressing.
Robots can assist some children therapies better than pets or humans
Another great example the book cites is that of children involved in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) therapy. Many affected kids have serious difficulty in maintaining human interactions, a facet of the problem therapies aim to remedy.
A lot of these ASD therapies are repetitive, and involve constantly telling the kids what they do wrong. Scarz lab came up with the idea of using Ellie, a robot head, repeatedly making social mistakes. Instead of an adult telling the kids what they do wrong, the kids are to teach Ellie what she should do, offering a different way to master the skills they need to practise.
Robots may assist children in therapies in ways humans cannot
Ellie will make a number of social mistakes, like avoiding eye contact, interrupting the one speaking and so on. The kids are to correct the way Ellie behaves.
This obviously could not be done with animal therapy: no animal would be able to model these social situations. And maybe not so surprisingly, it also cannot be done involving humans. The researchers tried to do that, they invited friendly actors to make mistakes, and asked the kids to help them. But the same children who were happy to interact with Ellie refused to interact with a nice lady. They saw through the situation and were too deterred to interact with a real person.
As adding animals to a number of therapies provided benefits human therapists could not achieve, the same seems to be true for adding robots to some therapies: they can provide assistance neither humans nor pets can offer.
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