‘We Have Feelings Towards Robots'

As humans continue to develop an emotional affinity with humanoids, how we interact with them is likely to change dramatically. The question is, can we agree on how to proceed ethically?

- Tiana Cline

HUMAN BEINGS ARE empathetic. Machines consist of wires and sensors. Yet, science fiction has shifted how we think about robots and, more importantly, how we act towards them. It’s an anthropomorphic emotional attachment that extends far beyond a humanoid robot that has simply been designed to perform tasks.

“We’re biologically hardwired to project intent onto movement in our physical space that seems autonomous to us,” explains Dr Kate Darling, a Research Specialist at MIT’s Media Lab.

Darling is a pioneer in the field of robot ethics. She believes that no matter how simple a robot may look, the moment it is seen as smart enough to act autonomously, it will create an emotional response.

“We may be far from developing robots that feel emotions, but we already have feelings towards them. What’s interesting about robots is that people will treat them a little bit like they’re alive, even though they’re just machines,” says Darling.

Most often, it’s about a robot expressing human-like properties.

“People respond to the cues that these life-like machines give them, and we respond even if we know perfectly well that they’re not real,” she says.

ALL ON HIS OWN?

“Whenever there is a robot that’s ventured offto do something that has some kind of organic feature to it, like the ability to move, we will have some resonance with it intellectually, and a natural affiliation to it,” explains Adam Pantanowitz, a bioengineer at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.