Socially intelligent agents , the first steps.

Robots socially integrated into society is a hot topic for futurist discussion and an often used idea for hollywood. The ability to understand human nuance, implication and subtlety is one of the most alluring and distant goals for robots. While these more ambitious goals are still a way off it is interesting to see where robots are already entering into useful rolls in society. I think the beginnings of it are happening now, with robots being used on more fringe parts of society, like assisting the elderly and those with mental disabilities. In this video we see some robots that are used to help the elderly in japan, a country with a greatly disproportionate elderly population.

This is Paro a robot that mostly avoids uncanny valley by being a robotic stuffed animal. This type of companion bots are supposedly already being used to keep the elderly and children with autism company although I do not know the degree of use.

I think robots will continue to enter into domains classically considered human. Perhaps baby and infant care is next. As often happens with revolutionary changes the change is first seen as impossible, then slowly unavoidable.

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