Machines are used to simplify everything from cleaning to medicine, but can they help ease loneliness in an increasingly isolated world?
The largest robot scientist in Australia
The day robotics festival in Brisbane is exploring whether deep personal connections can be established between humans and AI machines, as well as potential impacts.
A study published this month by the American Psychological Association warned that loneliness and social isolation may be more harmful to public health than obesity.
Professor Ron Arkin, an American robotics ethicist at Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that the future with companion robots is possible --
Now is the time to discuss the ethics of building close relationships with machines.
Professor Arkin, a visiting researcher at Queensland University of Technology, said: "The emergence of robots poses many risks to our future, and intimate robots are one of the most concerned issues . ".
Professor Arkin said that the current relationship with robots is mainly task-driven.
We give them a job and we hope they can finish it.
"Now, some of these tasks include working closely with humans to provide human companionship in many cases," he said . ".
The most pressing issue, he said, is how close the relationship should be.
"It is possible that such a person may happen in the dystopian future --to-
"If robots can perform better in some ways that humans can do, relationships can deteriorate," says Professor Arkin . ".
Professor Arkin says anyone who has seen her or Westworld will disagree with the idea that companion robots are purely sexual toys.
He believes that while sex toys have been used since time, robots equipped with machine learning in the 21 st century have the ability to perceive and respond to individuals, creating a unique relationship.
"By using human psychology, robot experts can take advantage of this particular way, but the question is, what should we, under what circumstances, how much?
Choi Eun Choi, a Korean art consultant and curator, also showed the benefits of robots helping education at the festival.
She brings a panda robot that can be used as a learning aid for children before reading
Programming fairy tales like Little Mermaid.
Robots use apps and speech recognition to answer questions that children may have about characters and stories.
"You need a companion when you learn something," she said . ".
"The panda will hold the book for you, and when you ask a question, it will answer it with its own emotions.
Theme: Robotand-artificial-
Intelligence, scienceand-
University of Science and Technology-and-further-
Brisbane-Education