Compassion
I would like to reflect on Sem Kluivers blog about compassion. One of the first thing he says is that one of the most important qualities of being human is being able to experience emotions. One emotion he has yet to find in robots is compassion. However, this made me think: would a robot benefit from experiencing compassion?
What is compassion
Compassion comes from the Latin word compati, which means to suffer together. This means one person deliberately has to put themselves in a position to suffer so that they can help the person who is suffering. Since robots do not experience actual physical (or mental) pain it would be easy for them to put themselves in that position and be selfless. It would be interesting to see what kind of impact compassion in robots would have on society.
Society
How would society benefit from robots having compassion you ask? It would help people who are lonely or need someone to talk to but are to proud to admit it. In the age of digitization, humans become more and more desensitized with each other. Being able to have a conversation online is not the same as talking to a friend in a park. Sadly the older you get, the harder it is to make friends. But what if there was a robot, for example working in an elderly home, that would feel compassion and recognize loneliness in people. And we are of course talking about a physical robots that is also able to show emotions. Seeing a concerned face or a smile while talking to someone makes a huge difference instead of chatting or calling online. A quick search online already shows that the mental health of elderly significantly increased when introduced to a 'culturally competent' robot. (https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/robots-found-improve-mental-health-22645744)
Compassion between robots
Robots experiencing compassion to each other is also a very interesting subject. What if you have robots cleaning your house in the future (like roomba's). It would of course be ideal if the robots work together instead of paying each other no attention. E.g. if your cooking robot notices that your cleaning robot is stuck behind a chair, wouldn't it be perfect if it moved the chair for that robot? Even if that is not part of it's qualifications. The final remark of Sem concludes that teaching robots compassion before gaining sentient is important and I definitely agree with this statement. I'm looking forward to seeing how this trait will develop in the field of robotics.