Can We Be Friends with Robots?

Understanding what it might take for a robot to become a true friend

Evan Selinger
8 min readMar 28, 2018

Robots say they want to be our friends, and this isn’t science fiction. Programming robo-buddies for friend-speak makes them appear cute and full of personality. It’s also an engineering tactic for getting consumers to trust corporate spokesbots to look out for their best interests, just like…

--

--

Evan Selinger

Prof. Philosophy at RIT. Latest book: “Re-Engineering Humanity.” Bylines everywhere. http://eselinger.org/