Without criticism! With the advantage of ＂not human＂, intelligent physical doll? The rise of companion robots

Smart physical dolls, also known as companion robots. At present, people think that the biggest obstacle for it to replace human beings is that it is not human after all, but who would have thought that in the field of psychotherapy, the fatal disadvantage of "not human" has become the biggest advantage of physical dolls.

 

Syrian refugees generally suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, but they are seriously short of medical resources. Recently, with the help of a foreign start-up company, some refugees communicated with intelligent physical dolls equipped with AI chips, and achieved amazing results.

 

The AI devices that can talk to people from the early incomprehensible, experimental computer programs to the Siri of Apple have amazed the world, and the concept products such as family assistants and intelligent housekeepers have rushed to the market in the past one or two years, which can be said to witness the rapid growth of related technologies in this category. However, in addition to entering the consumer market, companion robots also show great potential in another unexpected field, that is, psychological counseling and psychotherapy.

 

A team composed of famous university psychologists and artificial intelligence engineers has launched a chat program called Woebot, which can chat with users suffering from mental disorders, track mood swings, and provide videos, crossword puzzles and other activities at the right time to adjust and transfer patients' emotions. Because of Woebot's intimate and on call characteristics, developers claim that using Woebot may even achieve better therapeutic effects than human consultants.

 

Compared with going to the psychiatric department or seeking help from a psychological consultant, the biggest advantage of the companion robot is that it can remove the psychological barrier when the patient exposes his heart. "They allow you to open your mind and speak freely," said the technical expert involved in the research and development: "It is easy for people to communicate with each other, and patients will fear the eyes of others and be afraid of being labeled."

 

In other words, the biggest inherent advantage of the companion robot is that it is just a combination of silica gel, steel and a string of algorithms. It has neither blood nor flesh. It can listen to the patient's most private and deepest ideas completely and neutrally without criticism. This is not an intuitive assumption, but a result confirmed by research.

 

As early as 2014, the Advanced Research Program funded a study to build a robot called "Ellie". 239 subjects were asked to divide into two groups and talk with "Ellie" respectively. The researchers told one group in advance that Ellie was a 100% robot, and the other group was told that Ellie was manipulated by a person, but in fact, the subjects of each subject were randomly selected on the spot. The experimental results found that those subjects who thought they were right and talked with robots talked more frankly and were more willing to open their hearts, which meant that the factor of "people" became an obstacle in psychotherapy.

 

Companion robots have the ability to soothe people's hearts, and the huge business opportunities behind them will soon be smelled by new entrepreneurs. In addition to the existing physical doll manufacturers and robot manufacturers in R&D and manufacturing, if the emerging industry is also ready to seize this market pie. Maybe soon, there will be another psychiatrist in the occupation project replaced by "artificial person".







--Reprinted from the public account: Entity doll combat experience