Hafner, Katie. “What Do You Mean, It's Just Like A Real Dog': As Robot Pets and Dolls Multiply, Children React in New Ways to Things That are Almost Alive.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 May 2000. Web. 20 April 2010 <http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/05/circuits/articles/25pets.html>.
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Children have always enjoyed playing pretend, but have always been able to recognize that toys, even toys like Chatty Cathy that repeat recorded phrases are not real. However, with the development of objects that seem to convincingly possess characteristics of living things, the distinction is getting harder for children to make. The first toy of that kind was Tamagotchi, a handheld virtual pet introduced in the mid 1990's that needed attention in order to "survive". Since then, more and more sophisticated toys have been introduced that seem to be "alive". Professor Sherry Turkle, a psychoanalyst who studies the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has concerns about the impact of these kinds of toys. In her piece in the New York Times, Katie Hafner, presents Professor Turkle's point of view and describes her concerns. Professor Turkle is concerned about what happens when the toy that the child has learned to relate to breaks. Turkle led a study in which she and her assistant Jennifer Audley observed children 5 to 10 years of age in an after school program as they played with Furbies. When asked if the Furbies were alive, the common response from the children was "not in a human or animal kind of way, but in a Furby kind of way." Turkle sent Furbies home with the children and ended up receiving "frantic calls" from parents whose children were distraught when the toys "died". She would rush over with a replacement, but without exception, the children were traumatized and refused to get attached to the new one. Another concern of Professor Turkle's is the impact that relating to these robotic objects can have on our identity as humans. While it is true that they can break, they can also seem immortal. On woman told Prof.Turkle that she preferred her $2500 Aibo robotic dog to a real dog because it cannot die and cause her grief. Turkle points out that "Mortality has traditionally defined the human condition. A shared sense of mortality has been the basis for feeling a commonality with other human beings.'' She said, ''a sense of going through the same life cycle, a sense of the preciousness of time and life, of its fragility. The possibilities of engaging emotionally with creatures that will not die, whose loss we will never need to face, presents potentially dramatic changes in our psychology.''
Professor Turkle's observations are very relevant to the discussion about whether the use of robots in therapy hinder or enhance the patient's ability to relate to other human beings. She is qualified to make observations because she is a psychoanalyst who specializes in the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also spent two years, along with her assistant, Jennifer Audley, studying the effects of developing relationships with "relational artifacts" on human beings. If her conclusions are correct, they should cause those who advocate the use of robots in therapy to consider the possible dangerous side effects. The fact that the children in her study were traumatized when their Furbies broke, indicates that patients might also be traumatized when their robots quit functioning, and, like the children, have a difficult time developing new attachments. On the other hand, other risks occur when people choose to form relationships with robots because they won't die like humans do. Turkle's observations about the effect of developing relationships with robots on one's identity as a human are especially profound. She indicates that if we lose the sense of mortality that we all share as humans, and lose the need to connect with others who will eventually die, the effect on our psychology would be dramatic. We could lose touch with the reality of the cycle of life and the comradary we share with other humans. There are other life lessons that we might be deprived of if we find relationships with objects who are programmed to react a certain way, instead of with individual people who are more unpredictable. It is important that we as humans including therapy patients learn to deal with disappointment when others let us down or learn to compromise when others have differing opinions. Professor Turkle's insights about the risks of relationships between humans and robots are worth considering when weighing the positive and negative aspects of using robots in therapy.
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