Imagine a world in which after a certain age, instead of being taken care of by people, someone gets the opportunity to be taken care of by a robot. It sounds like a great idea; after all, robots are infinitely more reliable than humans, or at least according to some people. In reality, robots should not be trusted to take care of the elderly.
Robots are incapable of taking care of the elderly for many reasons. The main ethical dilemma, at least according to Rose-Marie Johansson-Pajala and Christine Gustafsson, researchers at Mälardalen University in Sweden, was refering to the robots as robots. According to the authors, “the word ‘robot’ seems to be a somewhat problematic term, evoking images of malevolent mechanical creatures.” There needs to be a much more delicate term for care robots; robots in general are designed to work with other robots or in other processes where there is no human input or moral reasoning. Our beloved parents and grandparents deserve much better than to be placed in the control of an uncontrollable object that faces no responsibility for its actions. It is reasonable to claim that current standards of robots are not going to be safe for the elderly. Instead, there need to be very specific guidelines on what the robot should be capable of doing. Amanda and Noel Sharky, researchers from the University of Sheffield, outlined the major ethical challenges with robotic elder care. Their conclusion was that it is possible but with certain guidelines. The most important part is that the elderly that are being taken care of by the robots are well-informed about their caretakers. It can be incredibly overwhelming at first if the patients are expecting to be taken care of by a human and instead are being monitored by a robot. The problem with this model is that it still does not solve the issue regarding human interaction. Humans are not solitary creatures; instead, we need companionship. How is a human supposed to thrive without any sort of contact with other humans? It is not a sustainable possibility. Now, if it was proposed that there would be robotic caretakers and human companionship, that would be the ideal solution. However, the majority of research done on the matter of care robots delves into only robots being used rather than utilizing a combination of the two. The concept of guidelines that the authors proposed seems like a decent idea, but there is no concept of legislation introduced. There is no alternative to enforce that the robotic and human aids actually follow the guidelines to ensure the proper balance of human and robot contact is met for the patients. Therefore, robots are not trustworthy enough to leave our loved ones in their control.