 |
Should Humanity Switch To Robotic Pets?
In his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick considered whether or not robotic pets might not be possible, and even more sensible, than animal pets:
In an article in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, research fellow Jean-Loup Rault of the Animal Welfare Science Centre, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia considers the same questions in detail:
Further exploration of these issues may be found in these past articles:
Read more at Pets in the digital age: live, robot, or virtual?.
An inspiration came to Isidore. "What about an exact electric duplicate of your cat? We can have a superb handcrafted job by Wheelright & Carpenter in which every detail of the old animal is faithfully repeated..."
Patients using the Paro robot reported that they “know it is not real but still love it,” and talk to it as a living being. Hence, robots can without doubt trigger human emotions. Indeed, funerals are held for AIBO robotic dogs in Japan nowadays, since Sony recently closed their last tech ‘clinic’ used to fix them. If artificial pets can replicate the human benefits obtained from live pets, does that mean that the human–animal emotional bond is solely dependent on ourselves and the image that we project on a live or artificial interactive partner? Does it ethically matter if the benefits of keeping artificial pets outweight the risks, sparing other live pets’ potential animal welfare issues? Conversely, could artificial pets make future human generations insensitive to the treatment of live animals (15)? As Turkle mentioned, “we make our technologies, and they, in turn, shape us.” Others are warning about these fast technological advances, with Stephen Hawking fearing that humans, limited by slow biological evolution, could not compete and would be superseded by full artifical intelligence, and Bill Gates warning that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to humankind. What risks would artificial pets cause to humans compared to live pets? And to domestic animals?
- Biomimetic Robot Animals - Not All Are Cute
- 'Electric Sheep' Gaining On Real Pets
- Heart Robot Wants To Feel Your Love
- Dream Cat Venus An Android's Dream
- 'Electric Sheep' Runs On Real Grass - EATR Robot
- EATR Robot Is A Vegetarian
- Robot Cats Perfect For Older Britons
- Does PETA Dream Of Electric Groundhogs?
- SmartBird Robotic Bird In Flight
- Do Swiss Roboticists Dream Of Electric Sheep?
- Cheetah Cub Robot From PKD's Android Dreams
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/20/2015)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Robots Help People Get Dressed, As Predicted In 1931
Yes, people of the future, robots will dress you.
Robot Snake Flies, Fights Fires
Just a prototype, but shows real promise.
IPAL Chinese Robot Babysitter
'But Nanny is different...' - Philip K. Dick, 1955.
DIY Autonomous Robot Detects Trash
'The search-bug detached itself and rolled forward.' - Philip K. Dick
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Current News
Jaguar I-Pace Audible Vehicle Alert System For EVs
'Of course not a vehicle moved by means of internal explosions of a derivative of rock oil...'
Autonomous 'Fiberbots' Weave Large Structures
'It extrudes material like a spider.'
Birds Aren't Real - Wake Up, California! (With Bird Watching Guide)
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'
Self-Healing Material Pulls Carbon Out Of The Air
'... could seal the punctures.'
IRL Glasses Block Screens, Limit Vision To Real Life
'If you couldn't see the ads, how would you know what was fashionable?'
Testing The Single-Person Spacecraft
'...the lower part of the suit was simply a rigid cylinder.'
Shapeshifting Materials Transform By Light
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.'
Fully Automated Farm Iron Ox Hydroponics
'Had these machines in some incredible fashion been provided with brains?'
BrainNet Social Network Of Brains
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE what we wanted and she took care of it'
Phil Nuyttnn's City Under The Sea
'Under the lower roof there was no water, but a clear and luminous atmosphere...'
IONITY Opens First 10 Fast-Charging Stations
'Recharge the batteries... in almost every town and village...'
Superstrong Multilayer Metal-Graphene Composite Material
Negligible increase in weight increased material strength by hundreds of times.
Deepfakes Imperil Democracy (George Orwell, Right Again)
'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.'
String Art Courtesy Of Robot Artist
The number of different ways to span a thread between a larger number of hooks is astronomical.
Still Wondering If You'd Work For A Robot Boss?
'This is all coming to you courtesy of the simstim unit wired into your deck, of course.'
World's First Autonomous Tram In Germany
What's it like for autonomous trams when they're turned off at night?
