This morning, I asked my roommates, “Would you want to have a lovely little robot in our house?” They were gazing at me, laughing at my joke, but it was truly a serious inquiry.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a robot like Astro (who was presented in the lecture) as your personal assistant and companion in your home? The Astro robot is available on Amazon for $999. I conducted some study and discovered that people’s perspectives varied greatly.
Some individuals are skeptical about having a robot in their home observing everything they do. Owners, though, can’t help but fall in love with their robot. You might think they’re insane, but remember when you were a kid…. weren’t you connected to your Tamagotchi, Nintendogs, or any other sort of robopet? Give it a name and you will end yourself grieving when it dies. At least, I did…
What’s the deal with this? According to Mark Edmonds, we trust robots in the manner in which they have been programmed. That is, the robots preserve confidence rather than creating it. So, in the instance of cute little Astro, we trust him not only because he obeys our orders but also because he protect and surveillance our homes.
So robots are really meant to be much cuter. They have large eyes and infant features to make them more appealing to human minds. But what about the scary aspects of this?
What if having robots in the house becomes the norm, and children grow up with them? Will they develop a bond with the houserobot and consider it a friend? However, for older lonely individuals, this could actually be a tremendous benefit and bring some joy into their lonely existence.
As you can see, the future of Astro is full of benefits, but also drawbacks and ethical concerns. Will you consider Astro as a new family member after reading this blog?
References
Basu, T. (2021, 4 oktober). Amazon’s Astro robot is stupid. You’ll still fall in love with it. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/04/1036413/amazons-astro-robot-pet/
Tritschler, C. V. P. O. P. A. A. (2021, 28 september). Meet Astro, a home robot unlike any other. US About Amazon. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/meet-astro-a-home-robot-unlike-any-other
This blog poses a really interesting development in IT and privacy. On the hand one hand we are steadily moving on to having more animatronic friends in our home in the form of robots, or tamagotchis in the past, but on the other hand we have started attaching more and more value on privacy and data security. It seems rather paradoxal to then invite a walking talking camera into our homes.
Thanks for writing this Juliette! I haven’t given any though towards my own opinion when this first came out but I feel a bit conflicted now towards Astro.
Very good post Juliette. I also have learned about Astro during the lecture and I find it adorable and really handy. Especially the part where you can observe if you have switched off the electrical devices. I think it is really useful because I have faced this problem many times and it is really annoying. Astro right now faces the same problems with all the other new technological advancements where at first they are treated with suspicion by the vast majority of consumers. Only the early adopters are embracing at first the new capabilities that new technologies offer, but in the near future I believe that technology products like Alexa and Astro will be part of every household.
Personally I have never thought before that humans and robots can be friends. When I read your post the movie Bicentennial Man with Robie Williams came to my mind. This movie was released in 1999 and was a story about a robot which was considered by its owners as a family member. I believe that this cannot happen with Astro but after some years, when robots for consumers will be smarter by adopting more AI technologies and more human-like in their design, humans will develop fondness for them and relationships between humans and robots will be blurred. This is an important ethical factor and we also have to see how humans will react when robots are making mistakes due to wrong judgment or programming errors.
Another important aspect of consideration is security. Have you ever thought about how safe it is to have a device that can be hacked in your own home? I know that computers and mobile phones can also be hacked but they cannot take actions like Astro. I believe that we should start thinking about how much we will allow technology to intrude in our lives.