MIT Media Lab researcher Kate Darling discusses clinical applications of social robots like PARO in medical settings and dementia care units.
Assertion Supported
Autonomous weapons create an accountability gap in existing war crime laws
“One of the interesting conversations that's happening right now is around autonomous weapon systems and accountability for harm in settings of war, where we have war crimes, but they require intentionality, and if a robot is committing a war crime, then there'…”
Insight
Nurturing therapeutic robots provides vital psychological benefits to elderly patients
“A lot of people think it's creepy, like we're giving old people robots and like having them nurture something that's not alive, but then you look at some of the advantages of having them have this experience when their lives have been reduced to being taken ca…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Darling: No empirical evidence exists to guide regulatory policy on sex robots
“And the fact is we have no evidence to guide us in what we should be doing.”
Opinion
Darling: Robot regulation debates are distorted by pop culture and sci-fi
“Unfortunately, a lot of the discussions are just fueled by, you know, superstition or moral panic, or in this context, a lot of it is science fiction and pop culture and our constant tendency to compare robots to humans and look at them as human replacements v…”
Insight
Human empathy for animals is based on cuteness and culture, not biology
“We fancy ourselves as caring about, you know, the inner biological workings of the animals and whether animals can suffer, and we actually don't care about any of that. We care about what animals we relate to, and a lot of that is cultural and emotional, and a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Soldiers' emotional attachment to military robots creates dangerous battlefield hesitation
“In the military, you have soldiers who become emotionally attached to the robots that they work with, and that can be anything from inefficient to dangerous because you don't want them hesitating for even a second to use these machines the way that they're int…”