I’m still scratching my head over why we even need robots to make us feel more comfortable, but maybe I’m the outlier. I once took part in an experiment in which all the participants briefly interacted with a robot named Melvin. Melvin had what looked like eyes and a nose and mouth, and talked to us.
After the interaction we were asked a series of questions. Does Melvin have feelings? Is Melvin alive? Is Melvin like you in any way? Down the list I answered “no”, and at the end, when we shared our responses, I stood out. The moderator explained that they had another robot that didn’t have a “face” and had a more technical-sounding name, and that experiments had shown that most people tended to think of “Melvin” as being alive and having feelings, while very few felt the same way about the less anthropomorphic robot.
Apparently I was the exception. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.
