This essay by Andrew Hundt has now been published in Critical AI at this link https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-12347663; an extract is pasted in below. If your institution lacks access to Critical AI please encourage them to subscribe. If you are an independent scholar please write to criticalai@sas.rutgers.edu.
EXTRACT:
Imagine activating new robots meant to aid staff in an eldercare facility—a setting in which the majority of residents are Disabled—only to discover the robots are counterproductive.1 They undermine the most meaningful moments between staff and residents, and they increase staff workloads; robots demand care, too. Eventually, the robots are returned. This vignette captures key elements of James Adrian Wright’s ethnography, Robots Won’t Save Japan, an essential resource for understanding the state of eldercare robotics. Wright’s rich ethnographic interviews and observations challenge the prevailing funding, research, and development paradigms for robotics. This review article, in turn, augments the book’s strengths with overlooked perspectives from disability and robotics research, leading to insights that support urgent paradigm shifts in eldercare, robotics, and ethnographic studies. For example, Paro, a plush robot seal, might be more successful at meeting some users’ sensory and self-regulation needs while being less detrimental to their social…