Rethinking Robo-Pets
Katie Engelhart, in her article on robotic aids for homebound elderly people, describes how petlike robots, which communicate with their owners and are designed to get to know them using machine learning, are alleviating feelings of loneliness (“Home and Alone,” May 31st). Mechanical cats and dogs are certainly a sensible innovation during the loneliness epidemic, which has become a costly catastrophe. But, while it’s clear that robot pets can provide some level of comfort, the commercial interests that stand to profit from A.I. pets may divert attention from solutions that are more humane, if more complex to implement.
We should not overlook less techy remedies for loneliness, which include sharing one’s housing with other people. There are millions of spare bedrooms in the United States, many of them in the homes of seniors who live alone. In the midst of an affordable-housing crisis, helping seniors find housemates who can offer companionship in exchange for reduced rent is a win-win proposition. The comfort that robots offer is only a stopgap; as Engelhart’s article makes clear, even elderly people with robotic pets long for real human connection.
Annamarie Pluhar
President, Sharing Housing, Inc.
East Dummerston, Vt.
Engelhart’s examination of the philosophical and ethical challenges posed by robo-pets includes a critique by the ethicist Robert Sparrow, who objects to the deliberate substitution of artificial intelligence for the natural kind as a violation of the imperative “to apprehend the world accurately.” But who does that? Any intervention that helps should be welcomed. We all live with our private delusions, which make living in chaos and danger tolerable on a day-to-day basis. Even those of us who have live pets converse with them knowing that the animals cannot understand or reply. This is not an instance of, as Sparrow writes, “sentimentality of a morally deplorable sort.” As the country’s population ages, the loneliness epidemic will only become more pronounced. A higher moral imperative than objectivity is the alleviation of suffering. If a senior’s life is improved by the harmless private fiction of a robo-pet possessing real emotions, it is a good thing.
Arthur Hooberman
Evanston, Ill.
I am ordinarily contemptuous of virtual-reality substitutes for the real deal, but Engelhart’s report on the comfort that home-alone older people derive from pet robots forced me to rethink that attitude. The robo-pet owners portrayed in the article are wonderfully self-aware, amused and amusing, philosophical, and decidedly not pathetic. When read in conjunction with the issue’s short story, by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (“A, S, D, F”), about a young man’s handling of isolation, it’s plain that there’s much to be said for giving space to sentiment, whatever one’s age. Kudos to the writers and the editors for that exquisite and uplifting juxtaposition.
John Bengston
Gainesville, Fla.
Engelhart’s article is informative and often moving, but it doesn’t mention an even more rewarding source of companionship for the elderly: real cats. Having a cat may take more effort than a robot—someone has to provide food and water, and empty a litter box—but affection between two congenial living creatures can, of course, generate real joy.
Janice Patton
Toronto, Ont.
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