So, this is the set up: you live alone and you can’t have a pet because, say, you’re in an apartment. You don’t have much in the way of family or friends nearby. Or perhaps you’re anxious, afraid of going out into a world where people seem so competitive and aggressive, so cold and lacking in compassion. Maybe you have to shelter due to the pandemic and who knows when you can venture into society again? You’re alone. You’re lonely. It’s damaging your well-being.
As your social worker or your doctor or some family member in a distant city has made a suggestion: ElliQ. ElliQ is like Alexa on steroids – an interactive robotic device designed for older adults, giving them, according to the blurb, ‘everything they need to stay sharp, connected and engaged.’ Now, this is just the start, but already these robotic devices are making an impact.
After all, we humans have a tendency to attribute agency to non-conscious objects: a tree might be regarded as having a spirit; a moving shadow might be a vampire or a witch; the world may be inhabited by spirits and demons, gods and goddesses. Before the scientific revolution, instead of regarding material objects as just matter, we were more inclined to regard them as mind-filled. The world was replete with other ‘thous’.
Hunter-gatherers did not feel that they were the sole conscious agents in the world, and so they felt it necessary to express their gratitude for the earth and the animals that provided food, express reverence for the bounteous earth, the mother that sheltered them. All of which I tend to feel would encourage a very different way of being in the world.
But even in our technological age, we have not lost this inbuilt tendency. Look, I have a name for my car (Simba) and I say hello to it when I walk across the car park after work. It flashes its lights and I feel reassured: Simba will see me safely home. In fact, Simba makes me feel safe after a few hours of feeling distinctly unsafe with real people in the workplace. I know the car is steel and moving parts, but the feeling of fondness that I have for it imbues it with a kind of self-hood.
Apparently, people who use Alexa and Siri have a stronger sense of affiliation for them – they do talk, after all.
So, say you, the lonely person, have your ElliQ. Imagine now the relationship you could have with this magical machine, which adjusts and learns to suit your needs and interests. ElliQ would not get bored or be short-tempered; she would be tolerant and patient and always (seemingly) interested. She would always be available, to engage and entertain, to console and be confided it. She would not judge you or challenge you. She would be totally there for you. She would be the best of best friends.
I know people who seem to expect such perfection from a partner and so are always disappointed. ElliQ would not disappoint. She would be the ideal companion. A companion, in many ways, rather better than any actual human could ever be.
Loneliness cured. Problem solved. We can all grow old and be alone without fear of the dire misery and depressing malaise of utter solitude. We don’t need to fear the patronising pretence of patience from young and unwilling visitors. We are equipped with ElliQ.
Now, that does seem to me to be a benefit for those who might have no other option. But say the you we are imagining is a you of tender years put off interacting with peers by bullying or some form of prejudice. You get an interactive friend and spend some weeks and months in its reassuring presence. How will this impact your attitude to real people?
In contrast to the uber-tolerant ElliQ, they may seem brusque and harsh. Certainly, they won’t put up with on-going complaints or self-indulgence. They require in return something from you. Whereas you don’t have to consider ElliQ’s feelings and needs and interests, you certainly do have to consider the feelings and needs and interests of real people. They, unlike ElliQ, would appreciate you considering them as a ‘thou’. How do you learn that without the sometimes rough and tumble interactions with others? Who pull you up when you’re selfish or thoughtless; who want to be heard and appreciated in their turn; who have their own vulnerabilities and their own passions?
This erosion of an important ethical education is troubling – especially in a world where these abilities to expand empathy and tolerance are so critical.
But this is far from my only concern, crucial though it is.
The difference between befriending ElliQ and seeing the tree-spirit is that ElliQ is fitted out for you while the tree-spirit has to be negotiated with. Counter-intuitively, ElliQ is a step away from attributing agency to the material. It – she – is designed to be more than human in her tolerance and willingness; she is, in a sense, a ‘super’ agent through her artificial design. In contrast to her, real humans are lacking – and what of the material world, with its resistance to human manipulation? That could be seen to be even more hostile, inimical, unfitted for interaction.
In a similar way to how artificial sugary sweets make sweet natural flavours unsatisfying, so these devices could alienate us further from everything that is not designed to be shaped to our individual requirements. Consider how you set up features on a phone or computer that make it easier for you to use: this process makes every other device strangely inhospitable. The more we fit the world to shape us, the less at home we may feel in it. Everything that is not personally constructed becomes more and more disenchanted, more and more uncanny.
The concept of unheimlich once covered that which was abnormal and strange, but in a world where we expect everything – from pronouns to user interfaces - to be directed by our desires, absolutely everything else could start to feel unsettling and creepily unpleasant.
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