In today's Alone Together reading Turkle shares the results of a study done with children meeting "social robots" from MIT. As I mentioned before, I wasn't even quite sure if giving an AIBO to a child was ethical. Here children meet Cog and Kismet, robots who are even more "life-like." We read about Estelle, 11 who was so excited to meet a robot in a college. She dressed up for the day. She remarked that no one in her family had even been to a college before- she was the first one to ever go into one, today.Well on that day, Kismet the social robot was malfunctioning and wouldn't respond to Estelle. The girl was so upset she started to binge on the snacks and clearly, she was hurt and let down. She had so looked forward to the day.
Turkle writes one of the most ironic sentences in her book thus far. I had to read it three times to make sure it was really there. She and the researchers asked themselves, "Can a broken robot break a child?" (page 97)
Now who is seeing robots as "real"?
If a robot can't love, and we know it can't, then a robot can't break a child.
But can researchers who place such a robot with a child, break a child?
Isn't that the real question?
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