I think I would be offended if some robot came up to try and provide emotional support. Its fake, and reminds me that our society values profit over human life. This should not be normalized as a necessity due to missing money that is going to the pockets of administrators, owners, insurance, and whoever else...this is pathetic.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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The example in the article is of a kid patient.
Sure, I just can't help but imagine how I personally would react if this became common for all patients.
I certainly would be outraged to have a bot assigned to me, as an adult.
Worth trying with kids. They play with dolls after all and imaginary friends.
Fr, fr. At least when a human fakes it there is the possibility that they aren't faking it. A machine that is incapable of feeling loses all ambiguity. It's even emptier than just pretending to be sympathetic.
Bruh, just give them a cat to pet lol
It's not the best idea to have a source of allergens, dangerous pathogens, and parasites around sick children.
Stuffed toy you can autoclave?
The idea isn't new or evil per se, since anyone that had to spend 2+ days in a hospital knows how dreadful it can feel. The problem here is relying on current AI tech, which may end up suggesting suicide during the chats, and the companies' pinky promises that your privacy and data won't be leaked or sold to the lowest bidder
I agree, but usually the vendor picks the highest bidder ;)
Let’s throw a clanker at a problem that obviously needs a human solution. What could go wrong?
Also: would it maybe be cheaper to just hire a human for this? Seems like the development of such a machine would be much more expensive that just hiring a guy.
I suspect a seven year old little girl wouldn’t ask for too much salary either. /s
I'm guessing cute bandaids and an ice cream cone would be sufficient.
I mean it’s definitely more expensive to pay someone for their time assuming you’d presumably have an army of these to replace with people. But it’d also be am actual solution instead of whatever fresh hell this is
I don’t think it’s more expensive to hire people for this work than to develop and produce a bunch of robots that are obviously not up to the task.
How could they ever be? Loneliness can only be adressed through sincere human contact. Any other (robotic) solution is financially wasteful at best and disastrously counterproductive at worst.
Developing the robots is mostly up front costs (between paying someone to “code” the thing and then buying the units) vs paying however many employees forever which is why I say it’s more expensive.
If they could make an actual genai I think it could help with loneliness but we won’t be there anytime soon, if ever, the way they keep following a strategy of scaling and optimizing a speech center.
That would just make me feel fear and loneliness
To help lessen your fear and loneliness, robochild will stand silently by your bedside all night while you sleep, keeping her eyes open without blinking the whole time to make sure you're safe.
Every time you finally start to fall asleep and snore a little too loudly: “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Doctors, euthanize me, please!
Is it bad this is the first thing I thought of? I can't imagine people won't do absolutely horrifying things to a robot programmed to act like a 7 year old
Found a former long time reddit user.
I take it the people who designed this never had an evil genius 7 yo daughter who constantly terrorized their parents?
Oh good, now they're taking the jobs of certified comfort/support dogs? The solution nobody asked for, JFC.
" Can I come with you?"
-- little boy in Screamers (1995)
Oh shit. That's memories. Creeped me the hell out back in the day...
Good times.:)
That's and AI pedophile magnet 🤣
Better to catch them with a robot kid than with real ones.
Or a treatment