Do you read me HAL? Robot wars, moral machines and silicon that cares - Part 1Do you read me HAL? Robot wars, moral machines and silicon that cares - Part 1
All In The Mind
Robots are among us. They might be on their way in to childcare and aged care as silicon carers too. Will the 'digital natives' born today be more comfortable with that prospect? And, many thousands have now been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with billions being invested in the development of fully autonomous killing agents. Will they fight fairly? Could they be more ethical and humane than humans? Over a series of shows, Natasha Mitchell speaks to leading roboticists and thinkers about the brave new now.
30:07•1 Aug 2009
Robot Carers, Moral Machines and the Strange Future of Care
Episode Overview
- Childcare robots currently act as mobile monitors and entertainers, but experts fear children may form deep attachments to them during key developmental stages.
- Aged care robots and therapeutic robot pets offer potential benefits, yet raise worries about deception, dignity and replacing scarce human contact.
- Ronald Arkin’s "bombs, bonding and bondage" highlights three risk areas for robots: military use, sexual bonding, and treating them as personal slaves.
- Isaac Asimov’s famous laws of robotics work well as fiction, but Colin Allen explains how real moral decision-making is far harder to encode into machines.
- Today’s autonomous systems are described as "ethically blind", making important decisions without genuine sensitivity to the harms they might cause.
“We are in danger of sleepwalking into a world where robots have become indispensable to service our needs, to watch our every activity, to police us and to fight our wars for us.”
What insights can experts and survivors share about addiction? Here, the focus shifts from substances to circuits, asking what happens when caring roles and even killing decisions are handed to machines. All In The Mind takes its usual curiosity about brains and behaviour and points it squarely at robots in childcare, aged care, and warfare.
Host Natasha Mitchell chats with philosopher and cognitive scientist Colin Allen and robotics and AI expert Noel Sharkey, with extra voices from roboticist Cynthia Breazeal and mockumentary producer Eurydice Yeroni, to ask whether silicon could ever be truly caring – or dangerously convenient. You’ll hear how childcare robots in Japan and South Korea currently act like mobile baby monitors and entertainers, and why Sharkey worries that parents may leave children with them for longer and longer stretches.
He notes that young kids might form deep attachments to robot carers during a critical period for learning language and emotion. A line like, “we are in danger of sleepwalking into a world where robots have become indispensable to service our needs, to watch our every activity, to police us and to fight our wars for us,” gives the episode its uneasy edge.
The conversation then turns to aged care robots and therapeutic robot pets such as cuddly seals that can monitor heart rate. Are they a comfort, a dignified aid, or a deceptive substitute for human contact? Colin Allen adds another layer, explaining Asimov’s famous laws of robotics, Ronald Arkin’s “bombs, bonding and bondage”, and why today’s autonomous systems are still “ethically blind”.
The style is lively, slightly cheeky (there’s even a dash of Kraftwerk and sci‑fi nostalgia), but always rooted in real ethical questions. If you’re curious about how technology reshapes attachment, responsibility and care, this conversation might leave you asking: who do you really want looking after you at your most vulnerable – and who gets to decide?
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