{"id":7977,"date":"2021-12-14T22:12:29","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T22:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7977"},"modified":"2021-12-14T22:12:29","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T22:12:29","slug":"in-isolating-times-can-robo-pets-provide-comfort-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7977","title":{"rendered":"In Isolating Times, Can Robo-Pets Provide Comfort? &#8211; The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/26\/health\/coronavirus-elderly-isolation-robot-pets.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/merlin_138153666_8f6bfc7d-edcb-4902-ae00-13c7d0d0ef74-articleLarge.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As seniors find themselves cut off from loved ones during the pandemic, some are turning to automated animals for company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m reading about Virtual Assistants and thinking that in some ways the simplest VAs are the robopets that are being given to lonely elderly people who are isolated. See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/26\/health\/coronavirus-elderly-isolation-robot-pets.html\">In Isolating Times, Can Robo-Pets Provide<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/26\/health\/coronavirus-elderly-isolation-robot-pets.html\"> Comfort?<\/a> Robo-cats and dogs (and even seals) seem to provide comfort the way a stuffed pet might. They aren&#8217;t even that smart, but can give comfort to an older person suffering from isolation.<\/p>\n<p>These pets, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parorobots.com\/\">PARO<\/a> (an expensive Japanese robotic seal seen above) or the much cheaper <a href=\"https:\/\/joyforall.com\/\">Joy for All pets<\/a>, can possibly fool people with dementia. What are the ethics of this? Are we comfortable fooling people for their own good?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As seniors find themselves cut off from loved ones during the pandemic, some are turning to automated animals for company. I&#8217;m reading about Virtual Assistants and thinking that in some ways the simplest VAs are the robopets that are being given to lonely elderly people who are isolated. See In Isolating Times, Can Robo-Pets Provide &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=7977\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In Isolating Times, Can Robo-Pets Provide Comfort? &#8211; The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics-of-data-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7980,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977\/revisions\/7980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}