The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph 'Care-bots' for the elderly are dangerous, warns artificial intelligence professor 30 May 2016 • 10:00pm Computer companions for elderly people are ‘emotionally dangerous’ and will never be good enough to take the place of real human contact, an artificial intelligence expert has warned.
 In December the University of Singapore introduced ‘Nadine’ the world’s most lifelike robot whose creators say will eventually provide childcare and offer friendship to lonely pensioners.
 More basic ‘care-bots’ which simply show an image of a computerised face are already on the market for as little as £3,000.
 But Maggie Boden, professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, warned that machines would never be able to understand abstract ideas such as loyalty or hurt.
 “Computer companions worry me very much,” Prof Boden told an audience at The Hay Literary Festival at Hay-on-Wye, Wales.
 “On the face of it, it could have conversations with an old person, and she can tell it her stories about her life, so it keeps her happy and if she tells it the same story it’s not going to be bothered.
 It could even collect her memories together and keep it in a diary.
 “But think about that.
 If she tells it that her husband cheated on her with her best friend.
 That’s a betrayal a lack of loyalty and very very hurtful.
 These things are supposed to be able recognise her emotional state and to respond in an appropriate way.
 “I suggest that the machine wouldn’t understand what we mean by a best friend, or loyalty.
 It is just too complex for it to understand and be simulated by an artificial computational system.
 “I am very very worried about that.
 I think these things are very emotionally dangerous.
 And I think similar things used on children if they were over-used could seriously affect a child’s linguistic and emotional and interpersonal development.
” Nadine the world's most human-like robot Nadine the world's most human-like robot Robots are increasingly being used to replace living companies.
 In Japan cyber-pets such as the robotic seal Paro and dog AIBO were popular until Sony discontinued them.
 Many scientists have warned that advances in artificial intelligence mean we are heading for a time when computer ‘thinking’ passes that of humans, a threshold dubbed the ‘technological singularity.
” However Prof Boden said it was unlikely that technology would ever succeed in matching the complexity of the human brain.
 “In principle there could be an artificial computational system which would do all the things that a human might to do,” she said.
 “It’s a very different thing from saying it will ever happen.
 It is too difficult and it would be horrendously expensive, so who would bother?
 “I don’t think that an artificial system could cope with very very deep philosophical issues as well as very deep scientific issues.
 “We don’t understand them yet, we’re not going to understand for a very very very long time.
” She also warned that jobs were at risk from the robotic revolution, now only in the manufacturing sector, but also in the professions, such as law, medicine and accountancy.
 “Unemployment it seems to be absolutely clear that the sorts of jobs available are going to change,” said Prof Boden.
 “It’s already the case that in many different progression, law medicine, science, in government policy making we are already starting to use AI as aides.
 “It will get better to such a point where it is not just the professionals themselves who want to use it but the clients will want it to be used so this sort of thing will increase so that the jobs of the professionals themselves will be downgraded.
 “They won’t necessarily disappear but they will be down-skilled and there will be much more dependency on the computer systems.
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