Why rely­ing on robots can be a dan­ger­ous notion

We should be wary of the sen­ti­ments voiced in Bern­ard Casey’s let­ter that robots rather than humans look­ing after old people might be a good idea (Janu­ary 24).

Most of the very eld­erly people I have encountered in recent years (vis­it­ing my mother and mother-in-law in a suc­ces­sion of care homes) crave more con­tact with fel­low humans who dis­play empathy and emo­tion, not less. Yes the care sec­tor is short of qual­i­fied and ver­sat­ile staff. But address this through chan­ging the struc­ture of the industry, includ­ing increas­ing pay.

More gen­er­ally the notion that we can solve prob­lems by the for­mu­laic out­sourcing of key jobs to robots and other machines is dan­ger­ous and should be com­bated.

Peter Marsh
Lon­don SW11, UK