However, over the last several centuries and millenia, the relationship that most people have with animals has transitioned from \u201cthat looks tasty\u201d to \u201cthat\u2019s my ride\u201d to \u201cthat\u2019s cute and snuggly.\u201d The industrial revolution replaced horses with engines, because engines better served our needs. Is it crazy to think that the digital revolution could replace pet animals with pet robots for exactly the same reason?<\/p>\n
Having a pet like a dog in an urban environment can certainly be difficult. Animals are expensive: most estimates put the average cost of owning a dog at between $1,000 and $2,000 per year. If you\u2019re paying for someone to walk the dog, and for boarding if you go out of town, it\u2019s even more. Dogs require lots of attention and a significant amount of your time, whether you have time to spare for them or not. And there\u2019s also the question of whether it\u2019s fair for social animals like dogs to leave them locked in a house or apartment alone most of the time.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, pets give a (mostly) unlimited amount of love and attention and cuddles, and that\u2019s priceless. Thing is, studies have shown that robots can fill a very similar, if not completely identical, emotional niche:<\/p>\n
\n\u201c<\/strong>Children treat the AIBO robotic dog as if it was a living dog, and this does not vary by a child\u2019s attachment to a pet at home or involvement in computer technology. Overall, robotic pets appear to elicit similar responses from humans as live pets, but it is unclear whether they stimulate identical responses and replace that need for a pet; notwithstanding that, scientists are still debating the function and benefits humans derive from (live) pets.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nPlus, they don\u2019t have upkeep costs or social needs of their own (although they could certainly simulate them, if you wanted them to), and if you\u2019re going out of town, they\u2019ll be fine on their own. In fact, they\u2019ll even mind your place for you while you\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n
I know what you\u2019re thinking: \u201cNo robot could ever replace the emotional fulfillment that I get from my<\/strong> pet.\u201d And that\u2019s certainly true. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. These sorts of shifts don\u2019t happen overnight in the form of the digital police breaking down your door and swapping your dog with an Aibo.\u00a0What\u2019s more likely to happen is that you have a dog, but your kids, who want to live in the city, decide that a dog just doesn\u2019t make sense. They miss having a dog, so they get a robot instead, and to them, it provides the same sense of emotional fulfillment:<\/p>\n\n\u201c<\/strong>If artificial pets can replicate the human benefits obtained from live pets, does that mean that the human\u2013animal emotional bond is solely dependent on ourselves and the image that we project on a live or artificial interactive partner? Does it ethically matter if the benefits of keeping artificial pets outweight the risks, sparing other live pets\u2019 potential animal welfare issues?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nRault doesn\u2019t discuss to what extent the robots themselves\u00a0(in hardware and software) will be able to emulate animals, but it doesn\u2019t really matter. As he says above, humans are good at forming bonds with all kinds of things (living, robotic, or completely inanimate), and as technology improves, it\u2019s only going to get easier. It\u2019s possible, even probable, that the pets we have in the future won\u2019t even resemble animals at all, but instead be unique\u00a0companions that we custom design just for ourselves.<\/p>\n
IEEE Spectrum<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all love our pets. We love them a crazy, ridiculous amount that is often entirely out of proportion to reality: you don\u2019t want to know how much I spent on medical care for my $5 pet store gerbil. As the world population grows and\u00a0more people move into cities, it\u2019s going to get increasingly difficult […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":39468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[469],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Robots](\"http:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/robot-dogs-f.jpg\")
<\/p>\n