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Essay / Analysis of Lauren Slater's article “Who holds the...
Authentic and intimate relationships are very important in our lives. Turkle defined the word authenticity in his article. She says that "authenticity, for me, comes from the ability to put oneself in the other's place, to establish relationships with others through a common baggage of human experiences: we are born, have families, and know loss and the reality of death. . A robot, no matter how sophisticated, is clearly outside this loop” (268). By stating this, she wants to emphasize that when humanity shares its experiences with others, it becomes emotionally attached and builds authentic relationships. However, sharing experiences with robots does not involve emotions, because robots are not humans. They are just man-made creatures that seem alive, but cannot experience any feelings. People use robots to make love and share their feelings. “Love and sex seem to celebrate an emotional dumbing down, a willful turning away from the complexities of human partnership – the inauthentic as the new aesthetic” (268). Here, aesthetics means appreciating the beauty of robots. When people start to like robots, they appreciate the beauty of unreal relationships with robots rather than having real, intimate relationships. Having love and sex with robots does not involve any emotion. As a technological creature, the robot can only give pleasure and satisfaction to the user, without any feeling of love or care. There are many medical technologies developed to produce love inauthentically. Slater talks about medical technology like neural implantation. She talks about Mario who suffered from OCD and received a neural implantation to love his daughter and her family. Slater says: “He wanted to try the ordinary, a lawn he could mow just once a week. The ability to tolerate disorder and contact with children. He decided the