In "Robbie," Asimov asks a troubling question: If you really can’t tell the difference between what’s artificial and what’s real, does it matter? That question is at the heart of the Turing test, as well as the next Asimov story-"Evidence. To Gloria, however, Robbie is a person like anyone else-he’s shown to be gentle, empathetic, and child-like, and though all he can manage is technically just a simulacrum of love, it’s enough for Gloria. In it, a mute robot nanny named Robbie and its eight-year-old ward (a girl named Gloria) become so close that Gloria’s mother worries that she won’t learn to socialize with other children. RELATED: Robot Takeover: This New Book Explores the Post-Apocalyptic World of 2083Īsimov’s 1940 short story "Robbie" imagined something very different. In the words of Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler: " helps you have meaningful relationships between your loved ones through her, but not with her." The article revolved around Kuri (an armless little robot that looks like a saltshaker) and warned that parents should make sure that their children don’t form emotional attachments to their new robo-companions, since robots can never truly reciprocate human feelings. This past summer, Wired published the article "Companion Robots Are Here, Just Don't Fall in Love With Them.”
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