Thoughts on emotional robots

The Kahn et al article really had an impact on me. It made me think about how our logic can be hijacked by our emotions, and how vulnerable young children’s emotions are and where the world is heading. It makes complete sense that the children would feel an emotional attachment to the robots, but what is it about the robots that cause this emotional attachment? Is it the fact that they are communicating with the robots? I mean, we are very social beings, and the fact that we are interacting with the machines on a social level and communicating with them and getting feedback, perhaps this is the trigger that hijacks our logic (i.e. they ARE machines and not “alive” after all, and we know it). The world seems to be heading in this direction, whether we like it or not. How will our emotional growth be effected by the advent of this new NOC? In short, I think this article does a great job at shedding light on what I think will be a very important issue in the not too distant future.