People have been making money by exploiting human emotions since the dawn of time, and loneliness is no exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Industrial Revolution \u2013 which saw people leaving their families and farms to move to cities in search of greener pastures, created a whole new market niche, says Shivangi Singh, a Leader of Tomorrow at the 48th St. Gallen Symposium and Young India Fellow at Ashoka University. \u201cLoneliness hit them, and nightclubs appeared in response to that,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you spend ten to twelve hours at work, what do you do when you are bored?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 200 years later, we\u2019re still lonely \u2013 in fact, globalisation only seems to have made the problem worse. And there\u2019s even evidence loneliness is a public health threat. A study in 2016 found loneliness meant a 29% increased risk of coronary heart disease and a 32% greater risk of having a stroke. \u201cLoneliness is a public health concern,\u201d says Daniel Sawyer, one of the top student competitors of this year\u2019s St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award and a bioengineering doctoral student at Caltech. In Japan, one of the world\u2019s most rapidly ageing societies, entrepreneurs seem to be finding innovative, albeit controversial, ways of providing companionship for their \u201ckozoku\u201d \u2013 loosely translated, the tribe of lonely people. Their solution: AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, Sony re-released their extremely popular companion-bot Aibo \u2013 first put on the market 20 years ago, then discontinued. \u201cSony was once really sensitive to how people can attach emotions to robotics,\u201d says Hiroaki Kitano, the CEO of Sony Computer Laboratories and Aibo\u2019s creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aibo\u2019s initial reception astounded the company, and Kitano himself. \u201cPeople were very much more attached than we expected. It was overwhelming,\u201d says Kitano. \u201cThat became a problem when we
discontinued it. People were very upset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But is it only the lonely who seek out companion-bots? \u201cThere are people who would not be able to have a real dog for a range of reasons, but still wish to have companions at home,\u201d Kitano says. \u201cWe started thinking could we use it for therapy, for nursing homes, for these people and their emotional involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two decades on, Kitano is far more skeptical when it comes to companion-bots as the remedy to the epidemic of loneliness, \u201cFrankly, I do not think AI could necessarily solve the problem,\u201d he says. \u201cA robot may be able to assist humans, or temporarily play some role in interpersonal relationships, but it will not solve the problems behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI to facilitate conversation? Sounds like something Daniel Sawyer might have pitched. His idea \u2013 to create a device that reads and translates empathy between two people \u2013 sparked a lot of conversation, even if the technology doesn\u2019t exist (yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such a device could help the lonely. \u201cIt is hard to prescribe someone friends,\u201d Sawyer says. \u201cResearch on loneliness shows it can be about misinterpretation of social cues.\u201d So if we had something to prevent this misinterpretation, quite possibly, we would not be as lonely?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But are we not really just missing the point of it all? Loneliness is a social issue, as well as a medical one. Do we not need contact with people, rather than machines? And is it dangerous to replace human relationships with robotic ones? Singh fears a reliance on robotics for emotional support would lead to people \u201closing their social skills,\u201d skills which are \u201cvery essential to long term human survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Techno-optimists think such concerns are overblown. Dutch inventor Stijn Antonisse, the creator of \u201cSonax,\u201d a huggable robot the inventor claims helps you sleep, thinks that we now have the ability to give lonely people some immediate help in the form of robotics. So \u201cwhy not?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leader of Tomorrow Vu Huynh believes we are looking at robots the wrong way. \u201cWe do not have to give them a human identity,\u201d she says. \u201cWe know we have a smart TV, a smart fridge, and now we have a robot.\u201d If we do not conceptualise the robot as a person, then fears of robots replacing human relationships become less dramatic. After all, have you not been ignoring your friends\u2019 Thursday night dinner invitations in favour of your favourite TV show for years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So: If you cannot sleep, you can hug a robot with a mechanical beating heart inside. If you are lonely, you can pet your Aibo. And if you cannot prescribe someone friends, is giving them a companion-bot really all that bad?
Whatever the answers are, discussing possible fixes for this epidemic of loneliness \u2013 either through the human touch, medicalisation or a furless dog-bot \u2013 at least shows we are taking this public health concern as seriously as we should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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People have been making money by exploiting human emotions since the dawn of time, and loneliness is no exception. The Industrial Revolution \u2013 which saw people leaving their families and farms to move to cities in search of greener pastures, created a whole new market niche, says Shivangi Singh, a Leader of Tomorrow at the 48th St. Gallen Symposium and Young India Fellow at Ashoka University. \u201cLoneliness hit them, and nightclubs appeared in response to that,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you spend ten to twelve hours at work, what do you do when you are bored?\u201d More than 200 years later,…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"INSIGHTS<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"wordpress@weitblick-online.ch","url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/author\/wordpressweitblick-online-ch\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","authors":[{"term_id":102,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kizzy-bray","display_name":"Kizzy Bray","avatar_url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gravatars\/762b22de4bf1bf3924204e9b02554eaa","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}