The ongoing Robots are Taking Over thread

Because, well, they just get more and more capable.


https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/...17-p52s1o.html

Quote:

There are more than 100,000 people living with dementia in residential aged-care facilities in Australia, along with 280 robot seals. They are joined by unknown numbers of robot dogs and cats, a small company of robot parrots, and one or two robot horses. To the wonder of many, the robots and the residents get on together very well. “I was a bit of a sceptic,” says Professor Wendy Moyle, program director at the Menzies Health Institute at Griffith University, Queensland. “In 2009, I looked at this pet robot and thought, ‘Oh, would it really have an effect?’ They seemed to me very expensive, and there hadn’t been a lot of research done on them. So we started doing pilot study work and the results had a lot more significance than I ever imagined. To my surprise, we found they reduced anxiety and improved people’s moods.” The most popular “companion robot” in Australia is Paro the baby harp seal, which holds the curious Guinness World Records title of World’s Most Therapeutic Robot. Paro is made in Japan, costs about $8000 and is the size and weight of a six-month-old baby, with licorice button eyes shaded by ladybird lashes, and a coat of fluffy white fur. To look at Paro is to love him. He cries out to be cuddled. Sometimes literally.

They are nice and cuddly. Unless they are drones, and they want to kill you.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/30f4ICa