What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely

What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely

For elderly Americans, social isolation is especially perilous(ˈperələs). Will machine companions fill the void(void)?

By Katie Engelhart

It felt good to love again, in that big empty house. Virginia(vərˈjinyə) Kellner got the cat last November, around her ninety-second birthday, and now it’s always nearby. It keeps her company as she moves, bent over her walker, from the couch to the bathroom and back again. The walker has a pair of orange scissors(ˈsizərz) hanging from the handlebar, for opening mail. Virginia likes the pet’s green eyes. She likes that it’s there in the morning, when she wakes up. Sometimes, on days when she feels sad, she sits in her soft armchair and rests the cat on her soft stomach(ˈstəmək) and just lets it do its thing. Nuzzle(ˈnəzəl). Stretch(streCH). Vibrate(ˈvīˌbrāt). Virginia knows that the cat is programmed to move this way; there is a motor(ˈmōdər) somewhere, controlling things. Still, she can almost forget. “It makes you feel like it’s real,” Virginia told me, the first time we spoke. “I mean, mentally(ˈment(ə)lē), I know it’s not. But—oh, it meowed(mēˈou) again!”

She named the cat Jennie, for one of the nice ladies who work at the local Department of the Aging in Cattaraugus(catrogəs) County, a rural area in upstate New York, bordering Pennsylvania. It was Jennie (the person) who told her that the county was giving robot pets to old people like her. Did she want one? She could have a dog or a cat.

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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/what-robots-can-and-cant-do-for-the-old-and-lonely