IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022 - 47

Commentary
Social Robots: The Friend of the Future
or Mechanical Mistake?
Jordan Miller
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281 USA
 IsolatIon can manIfest anywhere a person
chooses to age. It is detrimental to mental health and
is compared to smoking cigarettes and obesity [1].
While interaction with another human being is preferable,
sometimes, individuals are not able to do this.
Older adults who live far from their families, individuals
inside assisted living facilities during the COVID-19
pandemic, and individuals who have a limited social
circle due to retirement or loss of friends may all feel
isolated [2]. Cognitive decline can cause isolation in
older adults as well [3]. Social robotics is poised to
impact society by addressing isolation and providing
companionship for these individuals by augmenting
human interaction when none is available.
An exciting application of this technology is to
assist older adults living with dementia and their
informal caregivers. The robot could provide conversational
therapy to the person living with dementia,
a recommended tool by the Alzheimer's Association
[4]. The robot would engage the person in meaningful
conversation and help replace the pressure to
remember [5]. While the person living with dementia
is interacting with the robot, their informal caregiver
could use this time to address their isolation or mental
health. Informal caregivers often struggle mentally
and physically from caregiving, so this would provide
them with an outlet to take care of themselves [6].
Additionally, the robot could serve as a therapeutic
tool for the informal caregiver when needed.
Assisting people living with dementia and their
informal caregivers are the applications our team
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2022.3173311
Date of current version: 14 June 2022.
June 2022
looks to solve. Before we answer this, we are trying
to understand how healthy older adults would
accept this technology. We did this through a 2 × 2
Wizard of Oz experiment where we investigated how
interactive the robot needed to be to make the conversation
feel more natural and reciprocal.
While we are still exploring this question, there are
some exciting preliminary results. These include that
healthy older adults will accept a social robot and discuss
very personal things with it. Some of these conversations
include death, careers, and travel throughout
the years. Many participants reported feeling the same
comfort as they would talking to a friend, or in some
cases with specific conversation topics, more comfortable
talking to the robot than their friends. Many
participants disclosed controversial personal opinions
to the robot, and some reported that they told the
robot things they had not told their friends.
These results show a promising feature for healthy
older adults and provide valuable insights into the
development of social robots. They all reported they
would continue to interact with a social robot even
though they do not suffer from isolation.
While these preliminary results show promise, it
also raises concerns for the future of social robots
if precautions and guidelines are not put into place
now. One concern is the level of confidentiality. It is
easy to imagine a scenario where two people often
use the same social robot. If the robot repeats confidential,
personal information to the other individual,
it could exploit the person who disclosed it.
Developers should go out of their way to create a
cost-effective solution to social robots, or they may
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47
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