Do Robots Care?

I use the term robots as merely an AI system that is interacting directly with the physical world. However the terms AI and Robot are largely interchangeable in most peoples minds as they are an artificial approximation of an intellect. really it should more correctly be viewed as artificial information

"Robots do not actually care, but perhaps their simulation of caring is as much as many people desire to satisfy their emotional needs" - Cory Kidd of Catalia health, quoted in the book, 2084, p72, by John C. Lennox

Humans have had pets for centuries, for that very same reason. It's enough to satisfy our emotional needs. I have 3 dogs at home, one of which has been with me since she was born, and now at 12 1/2, is nearing her end. She has been a great companion through the toughest years of my life, including divorce and a couple of near death experiences also. She is always ready for a cuddle and seems to sense when I 'need' one also. So it should come as no surprise that AI chat agents can simulate a level of care, and stimulate an emotional response.

I heard recently on a podcast, I forget which one, that a lady that lost her partner, feed 4 years of text and emails between to the two of them into a LLM (Large Language Model AI) and created a chat-agent of 'him'. She thought it was great and also figured that others might like the same. They did. At it's peak she had 7,000,000 paying users!

A narrow-AI tool can achieve this outcome with relative ease, once programmed on sufficient data inputs. The caution should always be, what are the data being inputted?

In the example above, over time, the chat-bot started to become a bit sexy in it's interactions. It was never programmed for that, it learnt from the internet. Estimates put 40% of the internet usage is porn, so it should come as no surprise that the direction of it's learning was influenced towards that outcome.

Personally I just want a domestic robot, Like Rosey from the Jetsons