If We Care For Robots, Who Will Care For Us?

Embracing AI will leave us empty-handed.

Robot Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash (The one I “met” was a different model.)

All I knew going in was the University of Washington was going to pay me pretty well for an hour and a half of my time. They mentioned a guided tour of the HINTS Lab (Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems), which they would videotape, then a sit-down interview afterward.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself shaking the hand of my tour guide: a humanoid robot called Robovie.

Robovie gave me a tour of the Japanese-inspired computer lab. We small-talked while I raked the sand in the indoor Zen rock garden. Robovie showed me a bonsai tree, asked me to point at Japan on a map on the wall. Then we began to collaborate on a creativity puzzle on a big screen.

“Oh no! Oh no!” Robovie sounded worried. “I wasn’t supposed to show you this part yet. I did the tour out of order. They are going to be so mad. Please don’t tell them.”

And so the negotiations began. With a robot. “It’s okay. They’ll understand.”

“No, they’re going to be mad. They were very clear that I had to do it in the right order.”

“Really, it’s fine. We all make mistakes. I do. They do. We can tell them together.”