Robots and the People Who Love Them by Eve Herold

Author:Eve Herold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

8

IS THERE A ROBOT NANNY IN YOUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE?

Would you leave your small child in the care of a robot for several hours a day? It may sound ludicrous at first, but think carefully.

Robots that can care for children could be a godsend for many parents, especially the financially strapped. In the U.S., 62 percent of women who gave birth in 2016 worked outside the home, and day care costs are often exorbitant. In Washington, DC, the most expensive place in the country, the annual cost for day care for a single child averages over $24,000. In most states, the annual cost of childcare is more than college tuition. The price varies from state to state, but in all states, it accounts for a hefty chunk of the typical family’s budget.1

“We’re talking about the Holy Grail of parenting,” says Zoltan Istvan, a technology consultant and futurist. “Imagine a robot that could assume 70 percent to 80 percent of the caregiver’s role for your child. Given the huge amounts of money we pay for childcare, that’s a very attractive proposition.”2

Both China and Japan are on the leading edge of employing specially designed social robots for the care of children. Due to long work schedules, shifting demographics, and China’s long-term (but now defunct) one-child policy, both countries have a severe shortage of family caregivers.

Enter the iPal, a child-size humanoid robot with a round head, huge eyes, and articulated fingers, which can keep children engaged and entertained for hours on end. According to its manufacturer, AvatarMind Robot Technology, iPal has been selling like hotcakes in Asia and is now available in the U.S. The standard version of iPal sells for $2,499, and it’s not the only robot claimed to be suitable for childcare. Other robots being fine-tuned are SoftBank’s humanoid models Pepper and NAO, which are also considered to be child-friendly social robots.

iPal talks, dances, plays games, reads stories, and connects to social media and the Internet. According to AvatarMind, over time, iPal learns your child’s likes and dislikes and can independently learn more about subjects your child is interested in to boost learning. In addition, it will wake your child up in the morning and tell him when it’s time to get dressed, brush his teeth, or wash his hands. If your child is a diabetic, it will remind her when it’s time to check her blood sugar. But iPal isn’t just a fancy appliance that mechanically performs these functions; it does so with “personality.”

The robot has an “emotion management system” that detects your child’s emotions and mirrors them (unless your child is sad, and then it tries to cheer him up). But it’s not exactly like iPal has the kind of emotion chip long sought by Star Trek’s android Data. What it does is emotional simulation, what some would call emotional dishonesty, considering that it doesn’t actually feel anything. But as noted previously, research has shown that the lack of authenticity doesn’t really matter when it comes to our response to what appears to be emotion.

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