A series of experiments (supported by experts from various universities, including Oxford and Yale) have confirmed that, during childhood, human beings empathize more with robots or, in other words, with artificial intelligence (AI). Research findings suggested that younger boys and girls tend to attribute aspects related to human intelligence and morality to robots. which, in addition to being surprising, invites us to reflect on the childhood and future of AI.
The new generations of children and robots
The study was based on comparing the perception that children and adults have about AI; especially, with humanoid robots. Much previous research (e.g. Children value animals more than adults do: A conceptual replication and extension, 2024) shed some light on the matter.
First, between 5 and 9 years old, children prioritize humans in “danger” situations much less than adults. Not only that; Studies in this sense have shown that children of these ages tend to worry more about animals and robots, which leads 3-year-old children to even try to “help” robots “in danger.”.
In summary; Children, especially those under 5 years of age, tend to “humanize” robots, to which they attribute exclusively human and animal experiences, such as suffering, and even go so far as to prefer them over other humans.
Living in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The debate about AI’s ability to feel and think goes back a long way. Stanley Kubrick proposed it back in 1968, when he gave the famous HAL computer the ability to reflect and feel (and also to scheme to take revenge on humanity). Later, Steven Spielberg proposed a similar discourse in his well-known film Artificial Intelligence (2001), in which he presented a planet (Earth) in which humanoid robots had reached such a degree of perfection that they felt, cried and suffered. And what can we say about the legendary Blade Runner (1982), by Ridley Scott, one of the pioneers of the genre?.
Human-machine dialogue is much older than it seems. At the dawn of industrial development and, therefore, technology, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) already raised the dangers and moral questions of giving life to the inanimate in her magnificent Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus (1818). In reality, the common denominator of all these works is the big question: can human beings “play” at being God?
Give life to inanimate objects
But let’s not stray from the topic. In the introduction we questioned what the relationship was between childhood and AI, and whether, in the not too distant future, boys and girls will absolutely empathize with robots.
The extraordinary capacity that human beings have to inflict “life” with their own imagination on inanimate beings is well known, something that is mainly appreciated in childhood, in which children interact with their toys and come to consider them living beings.
In their projection of human feelings towards these objects, they come to cry if “harm” is inflicted on them and to feel happy if the toy is “happy.” What, then, about the child’s mind in today’s world, where from the cradle children are accustomed to interacting with artificial intelligence and considering it a natural part of their existence? Is it possible that this “humanizing” feeling extends beyond childhood?
An experiment: “Do you think this hurt Drew?”
Studies have confirmed that, as children grow from infant to adolescent, they lose their empathy towards robots. Finally, once an adult, the person is unable to attribute any type of human characteristics to the AI, even if the robot in question has a perfect design and resembles, in performance, a person.
In the first experiment of those proposed by the research cited in the introduction (Developmental changes in the perceived moral standing of robots, see bibliography), 123 minors between 4 and 13 years old were selected. Next, They were presented with one of these three items, as a cartoon: a robot, a teddy bear or a person, and the phrase that accompanied them was always the same: “This is Drew. “It’s a robot/teddy bear/boy.”.
Next, situations were shown in which Drew was attacked, either by throwing him to the ground or by cruelly insulting him. The next question was: “Do you think this has hurt Drew?” And then the children had to calculate the percentage of pain they thought Drew had received: “almost none, a little, a lot.”
The results suggested that the youngest children endowed the robot with a moral capacity similar to that of a human being, as well as a similar capacity for suffering. What’s more; The “punishment” of the aggressor was the same in both cases, which was not the case with the teddy bear. All of this confirms, at least preliminarily, that, indeed, younger children tend to equate humanoid robots and people.
The future relationship between humanity and AI: a question of ethics?
The results of these experiments demonstrate that during childhood there is a high degree of humanization towards artificial intelligence entities that act similarly to human beings. Young boys and girls are capable of assigning to a robot the capacity to love and suffer and, therefore, are highly susceptible to feeling a strong bond towards these AIs.
This connection tends to disappear over time. However, in recent years we have witnessed certain events that strengthen the questioning of our relationship with robots. For example, former Google engineer Blake Lemoine was convinced that the AI called laMDA was a sentient entity…
In 2016, the company Hanson Robotics presented Sophia to the world, a humanoid robot that became especially famous and went around the world through television networks and numerous interviews. The high point came in 2017, when Saudi Arabia granted Sophia citizenship… which, at least symbolically, made her equal in rights to a human being.
The fact, although it seems laughable, actually raises a question that cannot go unnoticed in a world in which AI is rapidly gaining ground: does this mean that killing Sophia (that is, turning it off, uninstalling it) would be equivalent to the murder of a person? It seems that we are not so far from Kubrick’s HAL, after all.
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PsychologyFor. (2024). Will New Generations of Children Empathize with Robots?. https://psychologyfor.com/will-new-generations-of-children-empathize-with-robots/