By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
So I read in this shopper Manhattan Express that Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, commissioner of the New York City Department for the Agining in the de Blasio administration, former AARP executive wants to "battle social isolation" which she feels is a problem for 1.6 million older adults in NYC. She has a point -- for example in my large housing complex of some 4,000 people, a woman died alone in her apartment and no one knew for days. Some seniors revived a senior group to have socials and outings to try to combat this. (The problem is that the outings often involve at least $30 in expenses and climbing stairs or walking some distances, which puts it out of reach for some).
So the solution the commissioner thinks will tackle this problem is not just a visiting program with real, live people - such as my church has and which the city itself has with something she launched called ThriveNYC Friendly Visiting Program. There are some senior centers but if they are anything like the one in my neighbourhood, they consist of a TV and outdated paperbacks and bad coffee. The private sector is better at this, especially with public funding, as some Jewish organizations have done for seniors in Brighton Beach, giving Soviet emigres like my mother-in-law the time of their lives -- companionship in their native language, meals, gifts, musical performances, poetry and book readings, art classes -- even ballroom dancing, which our babushka does at the age of 93 and says it keeps her alive.
But what Ms. Cortes-Vazquez is touting in this piece is a robotic dog given to a senior, aged 64, suffering from an immune disease. That sounds like me. There are some days I can't go out, I get opportunistic infections from a rare disease whereby the immune system attacks your own mucous membranes causing pain and suffering. Really, the medicines with their side effects are worse than the disease.
This woman likely has a much worse disease because I think with gloves and plastic garbage bags, you could minimize the remote risk of toxoplasmosis from cleaning out a pet's litter box (which may have been the argument in favour of the robo-dog).
"The dog has sensors, responds to touch, barks and nuzzles and provides comfort," says the commissioner.
The picture is from Ageless Innovation which also makes these automatic pets. Their version is only $99, for example like this orange tabby.
One old lady in the video says, "They make you feel you're not alone. They make you feel soothed." It's the purring sound that does it.
Obviously, this $2,899 Sony robo-dog does a lot more, although he doesn't look cuddly at all without fur and without strange robot eyes. But he can pick up a bone or fetch a ball or recognize people or respond to petting in different ways because he's just more sophisticated -- hence the price tag.
It would be good before spending city funds on all this if anybody got the idea to have the $2,899 version to see what people really respond to. Maybe they don't need a thing like this to fetch as much as they need it to purr and cuddle.
I do have to wonder, given the city's over-population of pets (I hear about the stray cat population from my daughter, who helps out a friend who is a "street veterinarian"), why we have to spend anything more than fees to spay and vaccinate the pets.
What a real animal gives you is something that robots try to learn with algorithms and "machine learning" but can't replicate -- randomness but also familiarity. A real pet has a favourite toy or food that I should think a robot wouldn't develop. It also does random things. Sometimes it sits and stares out the window; sometime it chases around the house. I suppose you could program a robot cat to have a wild run through the house every night at 8:30 like real cats do. Would it be the same? The robots obviously are still clunky, they freeze up, they can't align themselves with that bone as the video shows.
Of course, there is the one great down side of real animals -- they get sick and die. But this is part of the natural life cycle and maybe it makes you appreciate them more . (I had to put down my children's cats last year when at 18 years of age, they both got very ill.)
At this point, I'd rather have a real cat. The advantage they are pushing with robots is that they require no feeding, clean-up or vet bills. But the feeding and bonding routine is part of the attraction of real cats.
I have artificially-intelligent breedable cats in Second Life, an online virtual world (not a game, because it's an open-ended platform and you can put anything in it). The cats come with pre-programmed chat they say, like "Let's go for a walk" or "How did you get so big?" or "Did you know I like fish and milk?" You can program them to say other things. But that's just it. Then they are no longer random. They may move randomly, but the repetitive chat gets to you. The only thing random is the names of the new kittens, which are often odd, and a surprise, and to which some ascribe superstitious meaning (and it can get eerie!). You can change the names. But that's just it -- the randomness isn't there.
Here actual two KittyCats brand cats are being held in Second Life to help them to breed.
Here two of the cats -- a special birthday brand for the 16th anniversary of Second Life itself -- have gotten sick and "gone under the blanket" because the owner forgot to feed them or didn't "set to group" (a way to feed multiple cats with different owners). They stay in that condition for 7 days -- then go and eat more food to make up for lost time.
To be sure, the creator of these cats, Callie Kline, has programmed a lot of fun things into them -- they bat butterflies, they have fake fights with each other, they sleep on little pillows, they race around and you can pick them up and even ride the Megapuss giant version.
Still, they are nothing like real pets! You feel guilty deleting them, but they get expensive as they require a few dollars food every month -- or you can "permapet" them for about $5 to stop feeding them but keep them still moving and responding as pets.
I'm looking forward to the time when I can get a real kitty again.
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