this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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A robot programmed to act like a 7-year-old girl works to combat fear and loneliness in hospitals (apnews.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37869574

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[–] BzzBiotch@lemmy.world 45 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Let’s throw a clanker at a problem that obviously needs a human solution. What could go wrong?

Also: would it maybe be cheaper to just hire a human for this? Seems like the development of such a machine would be much more expensive that just hiring a guy.

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I suspect a seven year old little girl wouldn’t ask for too much salary either. /s

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago

I'm guessing cute bandaids and an ice cream cone would be sufficient.

[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean it’s definitely more expensive to pay someone for their time assuming you’d presumably have an army of these to replace with people. But it’d also be am actual solution instead of whatever fresh hell this is

[–] BzzBiotch@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don’t think it’s more expensive to hire people for this work than to develop and produce a bunch of robots that are obviously not up to the task.

How could they ever be? Loneliness can only be adressed through sincere human contact. Any other (robotic) solution is financially wasteful at best and disastrously counterproductive at worst.

[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago

Developing the robots is mostly up front costs (between paying someone to “code” the thing and then buying the units) vs paying however many employees forever which is why I say it’s more expensive.

If they could make an actual genai I think it could help with loneliness but we won’t be there anytime soon, if ever, the way they keep following a strategy of scaling and optimizing a speech center.