Can a robot be your next best friend?

There’s a new sex icon in California, and her name is Harmony. But she’s no Hollywood starlet; she’s not even a real woman. She’s a silicon and electronic RealDoll, made by Abyss Creations. But not only does she physically resemble a woman in super-realistic detail (yes, including genitalia), she can even hold a conversation, of sorts. And while the tagline says that she’s “the world’s finest love doll”, can a robot really give love?

Man or machine

We do know that machines can substitute people in providing some forms of physical stimulation; they have been around for centuries. Sex toys are even older, and are mentioned in the Kama Sutra. But it’s clear that the designers of Harmony, and of other human-like sex dolls, are responding to a rather different need — one for companionship that is not just physical but also emotional.

Our highly social species evolved to live in tribes, with extended families and strong pair bonds. But a paradox of modern life is that although there are ever more of us — around 7.5 billion by one recent count — we feel we are getting lonelier. And loneliness is bad for your health — worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to one recent study.

Who’s a friend?

It’s odd to think that we can have a physical need for company when it seems like such a phenomenon of the mind. Indeed, loneliness is in the mind too: being in a crowd doesn’t necessarily mean you feel less lonely. Can an electric friend remedy this?

Even raising this possibility is, to some people, a sign that I’m spending too much time in the robotics laboratory. But hold on a minute and consider what friendship is. Aristotle tells us that we can have different kinds of friends. Some are useful, like a friend who drives but does not drink. Some give pleasure — the one who plays the piano so beautifully or is a good partner at Bridge. And then there is that much smaller circle of friends, those we call “true” friends, with whom we share world views.

Going by this, robots can be useful friends at the least. Apparently, 80% of people who own an iRobot vacuum cleaner — a very short and round bot fixated on cleaning — give it a name. But what of “true” friends? Knowing how far we have come with AI, but also knowing how far we still have to go, a robot like Harmony can never be that. True friends think like we do, and AIs, even smart ones, will always be alien.

Animated animals

But there are other kinds of friends, too, like furry ones. Having a pet can reduce feelings of loneliness and the cat purring on your lap may be lowering your risk of heart disease. We are now much closer to this. With colleagues, I’m developing a prototype animal-like robot companion called MiRo: it feeds on electrons, never needs to go out, and can switch off when you’re at work. Another animal-like robot, the Paro robot seal, has been shown to improve the mood of older people with dementia and can encourage them to be more socially engaged.

Some people worry that robots that resemble living things are confusing, and deceive people into wasting emotional energy (if there is such a thing). Making a case against this, I think people, even children, can be quite sophisticated in the way they respond to robots. Engaging with it as a social being on the one hand, while making it quite clear that its a machine and a computer on the other. Second, you can have a genuine emotional response to a film or a book, and yet the triggers you are responding to are literally fiction. Feelings don’t need to be two-way to make us feel better; good feelings are good things in and of themselves.

Nevertheless, relationships with robots might be too easy. Our human friends can be difficult, and can give us a hard time. They could point out and make us change the not-so-nice things about us. However, robots could be too accepting of who we are. If we even partly solve the problem of human loneliness through synthetic friendship where will that get us? In Japan, the population is falling as young people turn away from the daunting challenge of finding a spouse and having a family. A 2013 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 45% of young women “were not interested in or despised sexual contact”, and a quarter of young men felt the same way. Whilst synthetic friends can perhaps meet some of the desperate need for company, we owe it to the future of our own kind to try to get on better with each other.