Robot Interaction Psychologist

Surveying science-fiction shows us that the very least we have to fear from robots is "making us feel bad". Depression is nothing compared to disintegrators and death rays, but according to Professor Sharkey (of the University of Sheffield) it could be a serious issue and necessitate this week's What Color's Your Spaceship career offering: robot interaction psychologist.

The Internet has already proven that people can utterly lose any ability to interact with humanity, and let's face it: that's just a beeping box and a keyboard. Real Dolls, synthetic-skinned simulacra of the female form, prove that you don't even need the informational content of the internet for obsession, with psychotics taking their silicone sex-objects on holidays (and not as luggage). Hell, anime pillows (body-length pillows with pictures of anime girls on them, and if there's a "proper" name for those then we just don't want to know what it is) prove that these things don't even need limbs for people to take them on restaurant dates. Yes, it happens, and no, we didn't want to believe it either.

Combine this tendency to tragedy with a new generation which automatically accepts robot figures as natural and you've got a whole passel of cyber-psychological issues waiting to happen. Especially with an increase in child-minding robots, the counselors of the future are going to have to deal with more than just flesh and blood all messed up over silicon surrogates.

Many computer scientists are working towards human style intelligence in artificial form. The human brain's incredibly adaptive and creative processes make this most attractive, but we have to remember that this has a cost: the system breaks a lot. Often in quite fascinating and/or dangerous ways. You might think there's the advantage that such silicon psychopaths would come with a convenient off switch, but once their thought processes become sophisticated enough to screw up there's also the immense ethical minefield of consciousness and rights.

The fact is, the future is going to be an interesting place and someone's going to have to try to sort its psychology. If you want to deal with something clinically depressed and literally armed with things that can crush cars, you're a braver (and possibly briefer-lived) person than us.

Posted by Luke McKinney.