Eighteen years later, a room of American fifth graders are actively considering that proposition. The children know that their grandparents value predictability. When the children visit, they try their best to accommodate their elders’ desire for order. This is not always easy: “My grandmother,” says Dennis, “she really likes it if my glass, like with water, is only placed in a certain place. She doesn’t like it if I don’t wheel her only in a certain way through the hospital. It’s hard.” In this arena, children think that robots might have an edge over them. They begin to envision robots as so much a part of the family circle that they provoke a new kind of sibling rivalry.
One girl describes a feeling close to dread: “If my grandmother started loving the robot, she might start thinking it is her family and that her real family might not be as important to her anymore.” Children worry that the robots could spark warm—too warm—feelings. They imagine their grandparents as grateful to, dependent on, and fond of their new caretakers. The robot that begins as a “solution” ends up a usurper. Owen worries that “grandparents might love the robot more than you. . . . They would be around the robot so much more.” I ask if the robot would love the grandparents back. “Yes,” says Owen, “a little bit. I might feel a little jealous at the robot.”
Hunter’s grandmother lives alone. She has a button to press if she needs help—for example, if she falls or feels ill. Although Hunter knows that My Real Baby and AIBO couldn’t help his grandmother, he thinks future robots might. Hunter has mixed feelings: “I worry that if a robot came in that could help her with falls, then she might really want it.... She might like it more than me. It would be more helpful than I am.” Hunter wants to be the one to help his grandmother, but he doesn’t live with her. He realizes the practicality of the robot but is “really upset that the robot might be the hero for her.”
This is the sentiment of fourteen-year-old Chelsea, an eighth grader in Hart-ford. Her grandmother, eighty-four, lives in a nursing home. Chelsea and her mother visit once a week. Her grandmother’s forgetfulness frightens her. “I don’t want her forgetting about me.” When I introduce her to My Real Baby, Chelsea talks about her grandmother: “She would like this. She really would. I kind of hate that. But this does a lot of what she wants.... Actually, I think she would like that it would remember her and it wouldn’t ask her too many questions. I worry that when I go with my mom, we ask her so many questions. I wonder if she is relieved when we leave sometimes. My Real Baby would just love her, and there wouldn’t be any stress.”
I ask Chelsea if she would like to bring a My Real Baby to her grandmother. Her response is emphatic: “No! I know this sounds freaky, but I’m a little jealous. I don’t like it that I could be replaced by a robot, but I see how I could be.” I ask Chelsea about the things that only she can offer her grandmother, such as memories of their time together. Chelsea nods but says little. For the time being she can only think of the calm presence of the robot stand-in. The next time I see Chelsea, she is with her mother. They have discussed the idea of the robot companion. From Chelsea’s point of view, the conversation did not go well; she is upset that her mother seems taken by the idea.
3
Chelsea is sharp with her mother: “It is better that grandma be lonely than forget us because she is playing with her robot. This whole thing makes me jealous of a robot.”
In Miss Grant’s class, the conversation about robots and grandparents ends up on a skeptical note. Some children become jealous, while others come to see the substitution as wrong. One says, “I wouldn’t let that thing [a robot] touch my grandmother.” For another, “That would be too weird.” A third worries that a robot might “blow up . . . stop working... put the house on fire.” A conversation that began as matter-of-fact becomes more animated. An anxious consensus emerges: “Don’t we have people for these jobs?”
RORSCHACH TO RELATIONSHIP
My Real Baby was primitive, the first of its kind, and not a commercial success. Nevertheless, it was able to reach the “real baby” in us, the part that needs care and worries it will not come. It made it possible for children to project their hopes of getting what they are missing onto the idea of a robot.
Callie, ten, is serious and soft-spoken. When I first bring My Real Baby to her school, she says that “they were probably confused about who their mommies and daddies were because they were being handled by so many different people.” She thinks this must have been stressful and is convinced that things will be easier on the robots when they are placed in homes. Like any adoptive mother, she is concerned about bonding with her baby and wants to be the first in her class to take My Real Baby home. She imagines that future study participants will have a harder time with the robot, which is sure to “cry a lot” because “she doesn’t know, doesn’t think that this person is its mama.” As soon as Callie brought My Real Baby home, she stepped into the role of its mother. Now, after three weeks of the home study, our conversation takes place in her suburban home outside of Providence, Rhode Island.
Callie begins with a diversionary tactic: she notes small differences between My Real Baby and a biological child (the size of their pupils, for example) in a seeming effort to minimize the much larger differences between them. She works hard to sustain her feeling that My Real Baby is alive and has emotions. She wants this to be the case. Taking care of My Real Baby makes her feel more cared for. She explains that her parents are very busy and don’t have a lot of time to spend with her. She and her four-year-old brother compete for their attention.
For the most part, Callie is taken care of by nannies and babysitters. She sees her mother only “if she [is] not going out.” Callie describes her as “very busy . . . with very important work.” But what Callie says she misses most is spending time with her father, of whom she speaks throughout her interviews and play sessions. Sometimes he comes to our sessions, but he is visibly distracted. He usually has his BlackBerry with him and checks his e-mail every few minutes. He seems to have little time to concentrate exclusively on his daughter. Nevertheless Callie is intensely loyal to him. She explains that he works all day and often has to go out to important meetings at night. He needs time to travel. Tellingly, Callie thinks that grown-ups would like My Real Baby as much as children do because, in its presence, adults would be “reminded of being parents.”
Callie loves to babysit. Caring for others makes her feel wanted in a way that life at home sometimes does not. Her relationship with My Real Baby during the three-week home study comes to play something of the same role: loving the robot makes her feel more loved. She knows the robot is mechanical but has little concern for its (lack of) biology. It is alive enough to be loved because it has feelings, among them an appreciation of her motherly love. She sees the robot as capable of complex and mixed emotions. “It’s got similar-to-human feelings, because she can really tell the differences between things, and she’s happy a lot. She gets happy, and she gets sad, and mad, and excited. I think right now she’s excited and happy at the same time.” When My Real Baby says, “I love you,” Callie sees the robot’s expressed feelings as genuine. “I think she really does,” says Callie, almost tearfully. “I feel really good when it says that. Her expressions change. Sort of like Robbie [her four-year-old brother].” Playing with My Real Baby, she says, “makes me incredibly happy.” She worries about leaving the robot at home when she goes to school. She knows what it’s like to feel abandoned and worries that My Real Baby is sad during the day because no one is paying attention to it. Callie hopes that during these times, My Real Baby will play with one of Callie’s pets, a strategy that Callie uses when she feels lonely.
My Real Baby sleeps near Callie’s bed on a silk pillow. She names the robot after her three-year-old cousin Bella. “I named her like my cousin . . . because she [My Real Baby] was sort of demanding and said most of the things that Bella does.” But Callie often compares My Real Baby to her brother Robbie. Robbie is four, and Callie thinks My Real Baby is “growing up” to be his age. After feeding the robot, Callie tries several times to burp it, saying, “This is what babies need to do.” She holds the robot closer with increasing tenderness. She believes that it is getting to know her better as they spend more time together. With time, she says, “Our relationship, it grows bigger.... Maybe when I first started playing with her, she didn’t really know me . . . but now that she’s . . . played with me a lot more she really knows me and is a lot more outgoing.”
When Callie plays with other dolls, she says she is “pretending.” Time with My Real Baby is different: “I feel like I’m her real mom. I bet if I really tried, she could learn another word. Maybe ‘Da-da.’ Hopefully if I said it a lot, she would pick it up. It’s sort of like a real baby, where you wouldn’t want to set a bad example.” In Callie’s favorite game with My Real Baby, she imagines that she and the robot live in their own condo. She takes herself out of her own family and creates a new one in which she takes care of the robot and the robot is her constant companion. It is a fantasy in which this child, hungry for attention, finally gets as much attention as she wants.
In my study, Callie takes home both an AIBO and a My Real Baby. But very soon, the AIBO begins to malfunction: it develops a loud mechanical wheeze and its walking becomes wobbly. When this happens, Callie treats the AIBO as ill rather than broken—as a sick animal in need of “veterinary care.” Callie thinks it has “a virus, maybe the flu. Poor AIBO. I felt sad for it. It was a good AIBO.” Most important to Callie is maintaining her sense of herself as a successful mother. Once AIBO is her baby, she cannot not fail “him.” She ministers to AIBO—keeps it warm, shows it love—but when it does not recover, her attitude changes. She cannot not tolerate that the AIBO is sick and she cannot help. So she reinterprets AIBO’s problem. It is not ill; it is playing. When AIBO can walk no more, Callie says, “Oh, that’s what my dog does when he wants attention. I think it might be sleeping. Or just stretching in a different way than a normal dog would.” When she hears the troubling mechanical sounds, Callie considers that AIBO might be “just going to sleep.” Once she interprets the inert AIBO as sleeping, she is able to relax. She takes AIBO in her arms, holds it close, and pets it gently. She says, “Aww, man! How playful. AIBO! . . . He is sort of tired and wants to rest.” Callie focuses on what is most important to her: that AIBO should feel loved. She says, “He knows that I’m holding him.”
As Callie plays out scenarios in the imaginary condo, her parents and some of the researchers are charmed by the ease of her relationship with the robots, the way she accepts them as good company. But Callie’s earnestness of connection is compelled; she
needs
to connect with these robots.
Callie is very sad when her three weeks with My Real Baby and AIBO come to an end. She has used the time to demonstrate her ability to be a loving mother, a good caretaker to her pets, her brother, and her robots. Before leaving My Real Baby, Callie opens its box and gives the robot a final, emotional good-bye. She reassures My Real Baby that it will be missed and that “the researchers will take good care of you.” Callie has tried to work through a desire to feel loved by becoming indispensable to her robots. She fears that her parents forget her during their time away; now, Callie’s concern is that My Real Baby and AIBO will forget her.
With the best of intentions, roboticists hope we can use their inventions to practice our relationship skills. But for someone like Callie, practice may be too perfect. Disappointed by people, she feels safest in the sanctuary of an as-if world. Of course, Callie’s story is not over. Her parents love her and may become more present. She may find a caring teacher. But at ten, ministering to her robots, Callie reminds us of our vulnerability to them. More than harmless amusements, they are powerful because they invite our attachment. And such attachments change our way of being in the world.
Seven-year-old Tucker, severely ill, is afraid of his body, afraid of dying, and afraid to talk about it. A relationship with AIBO gives voice to these feelings. Home-administered treatments help Tucker to breathe, but even so, he spends several months a year in hospitals. Enthusiastic play with AIBO sometimes leaves him too tired to speak. His parents are reassuring that when this happens, he just needs to rest, and, indeed, after some time sitting quietly, Tucker is always able to continue.
Tucker’s mother explains that safety is always his first concern, something that, she admits, can become trying when he second-guesses her driving. When Tucker plays his favorite computer game, Roller Coaster Tycoon, rather than build the wildest roller coaster possible, he builds the safest one. The game allows you choices for how to spend your money in developing your amusement park. Tucker likes to put his cash into maintenance and staffing. He says that very often the game declares him the winner of the award for the “safest park.” So, when he first meets AIBO in my office, Tucker’s priority is that it be kept safe. His anxiety about this is so great that he denies any reality in which it is, in fact, endangered. So, when AIBO smashes into a fence of red siding that defines its space, Tucker interprets this as AIBO “scratching a door, wanting to go in . . . because it hasn’t been there yet.” Defense mechanisms are the responses we use to deal with realities too threatening to face. Like Callie ignoring the reality of her broken AIBO, Tucker sees only what he can handle.
Like Callie, Tucker sees AIBO’s feelings as real; he says that the robot recognizes and loves him. Tucker explains that when he goes to school, his dog Reb misses him and sometimes wants to jump into the car with him. He thinks that when he takes AIBO home, it will have the same loving desires. Indeed, Tucker finds few differences between AIBO and Reb, most of them unflattering to the biological pet. When Tucker learns to interpret AIBO’s blinking lights, he concludes that the robot and Reb have “the same feelings,” although he decides that AIBO seems the angrier of the two.