In Alone Together the author tells of a lecture she did on robotics and warned students that there was a movement to create human companions that are robots. Af

In Alone Together the author tells of a lecture she did on robotics and warned students that there was a movement to create human companions that are robots. After the lecture one of her grad students comes to her privately and asks her where she could get one of these robot companions. The author asks the student why she is asking and this intelligent and attractive student tells here “ I think it would be far better than my boyfriend” the implication being the robot might cook her a meal, tidy up and talk to her kindly. Then the professors says “But it’s not real.” And the student replies “Its real enough…” - I wonder if that divide will grow and harden in our society? Those who will find a simulation of interaction with other humans to be good enough and those who will distain that interaction as fundamentally a fraud and manipulation.