Hello Ms Robot

alJ has a report on social robots in Japan

There's fear in some countries around the world that robotics will eventually replace humans, but, in Japan, hopes are high that human-like robots can solve some of their problems. Japan's population is rapidly declining, and, according to the United Nations, its population is the oldest in the world. One of the suggested solutions is to replace workers with robots and use robots to take care of the elderly.

so Japan's population is disappearing, and even bringing back the sons and daughters of the Japanese diaspora is not enough.

They could, of course, copy western Europe and import workers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, or they could just hire more Filipina caregivers...These workers of course could come on short term visas, like the caregivers in the Middle East: but the problem of those lovely Filipinas is that they tend to marry local men and stay there... and worse: you get mixed race children.

(this is less of a problem in the USA, where few have servants, and because, despite all the Trumpite/right wing racism against immigrants as "the other", or the rigid multicultural/antiamerican racism of the left wing that implies you are stuck in your grandparents culture for life, the dirty little secret is that immigrants to the US quickly morph into... Americans).

Caregiving robots? in today's world, like the "sex robots" sometimes discussed in the press, the dirty little secret is that, so far, such "robots" are not sophisticated...

but with the trend you can either see the robots taking over the world, or see them as slaves for the rich, without human rights

Isaac Asimov wrote a lot about the problem, including the debate if robots would be given human rights..

Or maybe they will just integrate into society, the way immigrants have done in the past: the most famous story of benevolent robot caregivers is this famous Ray Bradbury story that had been made into a Twilight zone story: I sing the Body electric.



that phrase, by the way, comes from a poem by Walt Whitman.