Trust, familiarity and slippery slopes
Trust thought for today - Trust, familiarity and slippery slopes.
I recall the wonderful behavioural scientist Prof Eldar Shafir from Princeton challenging me in the early days of our work on what it takes to earn trust in tech & governance. He proposed that basic familiarity, making it ordinary, was pretty much the key. We resisted. Too simple.
A few years earlier, I worked with the equally wonderful Tony Prescott, Prof of Cognitive Robotics at Univ Sheffield on Responsible Robotics and the involvement of all of us as citizens, patients and users, of robotics, particularly in a care setting. I met Peppa the Robot, MIRO the dog, and Paro the seal. I was unimpressed, resistant. Too annoying. Dehumanising, not respectful of humans. We don't need robots, we have people. This will end up being all about money and toys and will undermine human relationships and end badly. (Tho I hadn't articulated it then, it was just a vague and nameless feeling of distrust)
I was reminded of these interactions by this really great and thoughtful excerpt from a new book soon out, 'God, Human, Animal, Machine' by Meghan O’Gieblyn. Here’s the article - A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness.
Despite all this thinking about tech, at the same time as admiring and puzzling over the serious philosophical thinking in the article, it popped into my head that this little dog would be great for my 92 year old mother-in-law with early stage dementia. If it was cheaper I would give it a go. I think it was the familiarity and ordinariness that nudged me over into thoughtless consumerism! This is how change happens, as Eldar said.
So on further reflection it looks like we will want these robots, which will be as much about money and toys as therapeutic devices, and we will get them whether we like it or not. Perhaps a slippery slope from 1980's dolls that talk through Alexa (BTW a pointless piece of junk in my view) and the robot vacuum cleaner. Let's hope there is the thoughtfulness and reflection that Tony puts into his work, but I doubt it.
Is it just me or is having to worry about all these big existential problems getting very tiring and depressing?