"She has spent some 15 years since that day studying this emerging breed of 'sociable robots.'" (Image by jeanbaptisteparis.)

Sherry Turkle fell in love with a robot once. It didn’t work out.

Turkle is the MIT professor whose 1995 book, Life on the Screen, was sanguine about the growing interaction between people and technology. But she had doubts after feeling her emotions stir for a robot named Cog she was working with at the university. The personal connection with the bot gave Turkle pause, making her wary that humans are growing reliant on gadgets not just for utility but also for the type of nourishment provided in the past by people.

While her love for Cog may say more about the academic herself than anyone else, Turkle doesn’t think so. She shared some of her fears of how artificial intelligence may soon replace human emotion with Jeffrey R. Young of the Chronicle. (Thanks A&L Daily.) An excerpt:

“She has spent some 15 years since that day studying this emerging breed of ‘sociable robots’—including toys like Furbies and new robotic pets for the elderly—and what she considers their seductive and potentially dangerous powers. She argues that robotics’ growing trend toward creating machines that act as if they were alive could lead people to place machines in roles she thinks only humans should occupy.

Her prediction: Companies will soon sell robots designed to baby-sit children, replace workers in nursing homes, and serve as companions for people with disabilities. All of which to Turkle is demeaning, ‘transgressive,’ and damaging to our collective sense of humanity. It’s not that she’s against robots as helpers—building cars, vacuuming floors, and helping to bathe the sick are one thing. She’s concerned about robots that want to be buddies, ‘implicitly promising an emotional connection they can never deliver.”