Emotional attachment to robots could affect outcome on battlefield | UW Today.
An interesting twist on Human – Machine attachments from the military arena. Here’s a quote from the article:
It’s becoming more common to have robots sub in for humans to do dirty or sometimes dangerous work. But researchers are finding that in some cases, people have started to treat robots like pets, friends, or even as an extension of themselves. That raises the question, if a soldier attaches human or animal-like characteristics to a field robot, can it affect how they use the robot? What if they “care” too much about the robot to send it into a dangerous situation?
As I have blogged about before, countries like Japan and the US are going through what social commentators are calling a “Care Crisis.” Simply, there are not enough caregivers to take care of the young, elderly, and the sick. This Care Crisis has led attachment researchers (Everett Waters and his colleagues would be examples here) to push the idea of using robot caregivers to take up the slack. Japan is feverishly developing and manufacturing mechanical caregivers as their Care Crisis reaches critical mass. This begs the question, “As Human – Machine attachment is pushed in the civilian arena, how will this affect Human – Machine relationships in the military arena?”
Sherry Turkle, writing in her book Alone Together—Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, suggests that kids are forming attachment relationships with their screen devices (such as smartphones and tablets) at early and early ages. Screen devices are quickly becoming parent substitutes. It may seem like a trivial question but what happens when these kids enter the military? I can’t imagine that the military will allow soldiers to update their Facebook pages while dodging bullets. What happens when these kids are separated from their screen devices turned attachment figures for the very first time? Will they feel motivated to quickly shift their attachment to their screen devices over to the military robots that now surround them? I have no idea what the answers are to these questions, but my sense is that these types of questions will become more pressing as our society continues to encourage Human – Machine attachments in both civilian and military arenas.
I’m glad that University of Washington researchers are taking a look at these questions. As Human – Machine attachments increase in number and intensity the attachment relationship landscape will shift dramatically. I hope the current generation of attachment researchers are up to the task. The above article by Doree Armstrong profiles the work of UW education researcher Julie Carpenter. So, it’s clear that disciplines outside of psychology (i.e., Carpenter in education and Turkle in sociology and AI or artificial intelligence) are looking at Human – Machine attachment. Heck, I’m currently reading a book by business leader Robert Hall that in part looks at Human – Machine attachment. Hall’s book is entitled This Land of Strangers—The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics, and Faith. (More than likely I’ll have more to say about Hall’s book in future blog posts.) Suffice it to say that there is a close connection between the Relationship Crisis that Hall describes and the Care Crisis mentioned above. I’ll end with this quote about some of the work that UW researcher Carpenter is involved in:
The robots these soldiers currently use don’t look at all like a person or animal, but the military is moving toward more human and animal lookalike robots, which would be more agile, and better able to climb stairs and maneuver in narrow spaces and on challenging natural terrain. Carpenter wonders how that human or animal-like look will affect soldiers’ ability to make rational decisions, especially if a soldier begins to treat the robot with affection akin to a pet or partner.
