Eve Herold

Let me put it this way.

If you have a robot and it says to you, I love you, you're beautiful.

The same parts of your brain light up when you hear those words from a robot as they would if your significant other said them.

So our brains, our nervous system, it's all something that plays into this and which is a little bit scary because

It's a little bit nefarious when you think about it.

We're kind of having our hard wiring used against us by commercial forces.

That's one way of looking at it.

Another way of looking at it is that they'll be extremely easy for us to operate because it comes so natural to us.

This is what is being worked on right now.

These social robots go way beyond all that.

They learn the way a child learns.

So they learn in association with you.

They reflect back to you your tastes, your preferences.

They remember everything you tell them.

They get to know you better than you know yourself, perhaps.

And it's a little overwhelming to think about it, but we can get...

We can be served by robots in a very consistent manner.

They'll cater to us in a way that no human partner ever could, which is where the danger lies.

Because I'm concerned about people replacing the primary relationships in their lives, even their friends, with robots, because robots could become the path of least resistance.

That's why I write a lot about the dividing line and maintaining a really firm grip on what's real and what's not real.