FAB Gab Episode 9: Mercer Gary on Care Robots and the Mechanisation of Health Care

5:41AM Jun 15, 2021

Speakers:

Kathryn MacKay

Mercer Gary

Keywords:

care

robots

paper

robot

paro

ethics

human

mercer

feminist

technology

domination

kinds

people

thinking

fab

attachment

reading

distorting

uniquely

critiques

Hello, and welcome to FABGab. This is the podcast for the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, brought to you by FAB Network. My name is Kathryn MacKay and today I'm joined by Mercer Gary, from Penn State University to discuss her paper 'Care Robots, Crises of Capitalism and the Limits of Human Caring', which is out now in the latest volume of IJFAB volume 14 number one. So Mercer, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. Good to be here.

Oh, thanks for being here. This is great. So um on the topic of care robots, crises of capitalism, I wonder if you could give us a summary of your paper?

Sure, absolutely. So the paper situates social robots that are increasingly used as companions and aged care settings within the dire straits of the current care sector, but tries to do so without characterising these artefacts or other kinds of non-typical forms of care as necessarily pernicious and distorting. So ultimately, this paper is an attempt to capture the duality of contemporary care work as both deeply implicated within systems of domination and yet not fully determined by it. So I try to show that reckoning with this kind of ambivalence is central to understanding and studying care

Have care robots and something that you've been interested in for a little while?

For a while now. Yeah, I, I started thinking about them at a conference where I was introduced to the phenomenon itself, and did a lot more digging. And it was through a studying some more of Nancy Fraser's work, that I found this kind of framing for the issue. But yeah, they've been on my mind a fair amount.

Yeah. I've noticed them more and more in kind of pop culture discussions. So it was really interesting to read an academic breakdown.

Yeah, I... so I started reading and researching on care robots in 2018. And it's pretty amazing the increase in their representation in pop culture even since then. So yeah, a lot of kind of touchstones, and more people who have some kind of familiarity with even direct familiarity with these, these... this kind of technology.

Yeah, wow, that's moving pretty fast. So did you have a particular motivation behind writing this paper?

Yeah, so there has been a fair amount of work that engages care ethics in relation to care robots within bioethics and the ethics of technology. And that's always important to me as someone who I think sees ah... feminist ethics and care ethics kind of discarded or put to the side in these discussions. And, and so I think, especially if Shannon Balor and Amy van Landsberg here who've done some some great work. But I really wanted to kind of dig in more into what this means for the kind of conceptual structure of care ethics and and what kinds of challenges these robots pose to our understandings of care, that are kind of suggested by some critiques of them, but not fully developed or considered. I also wanted to kind of continue to think about systemic analyses in bioethics, and really positioning this individual phenomenon within a larger context of socio-political conditions that are so significant in its emergence.

Yes, agreed. So let's get into that. So, what are some of the main points of your argument? Would you say... if you could just take us through it.

Sure. So I think the first kind of part of the paper really tries to treat care robots as part of a larger crisis rather than a uniquely disturbing feature of the care landscape. So seeing a kind of broader moves towards mechanisation of health care and increasing demands on on human care workers, as, as all of a piece of a a system that is... whose needs are outstripping its ability or willingness to provide for those in need. And, and so there I'm trying to say that criticisms of care robots that are already sustained can really better be levied against the current organisation of social reproduction itself. And so we need to kind of go for the bigger problem rather than the the manifestation of it. Next, my, my, my paper kind of takes up this, this question of the normative status of care. So I use Nancy Fraser and Rocio Zambrana's work on normative ambivalence, which helps me characterise how care as a descriptive concept can be used for contrary grade purposes. So can just as easily be used in support of patriarchal and racist domination as in feminist critiques of those very systems. So it's kind of figuring out how care is justified in its... in its use for critical projects becomes really significant. And that kind of opens up a larger conversation about how we determine what counts as as liberatory care or care that's adequate to feminist purposes. So the final part of the paper tries to complicate some appeals that are fairly common, that claim that robots are kind of distorting or damaging this uniquely human value of care. And that kind of notion of care as uniquely human has been contested in some parts more recently, with appeals to multi species and ecological care. But it also really gets to this this problem of the the concept of the human that has been so historically exclusionary, and used to justify domination, colonisation, and enslavement. And so trying to think beyond how the the human in, in that exclusionary sense really continues to appear within care ethics. I try to use robots as kind of a leverage point towards thinking thinking beyond that usage.

Yeah, there's so many interesting things in there. I think. Perhaps this is partly influenced by the reading that I've been doing lately, which has been quite broad. And I was just reading a paper by Raymond Williams called 'Culture is Ordinary'. But I read your paper with this real lens of critiquing capitalism. And I thought that your paper the way that it I mean, one of the things that I really liked about your paper was how it situates care robots, as you said, not as uniquely disturbing, which I think it's actually a great place to start with it, because that seems to be where the, the lay population like I'm coming to this just from mostly reading popular newsprint and stuff like that, tends to be either 'this is so cute', in the case of Paro, the seal, or 'this is really weird' in the case of other sorts of robots that we might see that are perhaps more like lifelike, more human, that look kind of uncanny. So it was interesting to start, okay, we're not talking about robots as a uniquely disturbing thing. Actually, we're thinking about them as a complex and non-ideal solution to a complex and non ideal state. And getting into it that way was I thought really, really interesting.

Thanks. Yeah, I think, exactly this question of why they're not-ideal too, is really important. And are they non-ideal because robot caring, no matter what sort of technology is developed, whatever level of artificial intelligence they come to have, at some point in the future that they certainly don't currently have. Whether whether it is something about about robot caring that is itself inadequate, or whether it is a problem of, of our current setup of, of the care sector, that is more an issue. And I do I tend to think a latter.

Mm hmm. Were there any particular challenges that you faced when you were doing this research or writing this paper?

Yeah, definitely. So one challenge, I think, was kind of clarifying my primary audience, because I'm, I'm drawing from some different feminist traditions, I wanted to make sure that I was doing justice to those bodies of work while also, you know, really pitching this to to a bioethic audience and a care ethics audience. So having a number of readers on that was really helpful on that front. Another challenge I'd say is, yes, is exactly dealing with this question of the romanticization of this technology and what... what care robots are as opposed to what they're thought to be versus what they might conceivably be in the future. And so, on that front, I really tried to focus more on how people were relating to these objects, and what the kinds of attachments that they were describing and and feelings that they were recounting might tell us about the possibilities of connection, rather than trying to get into, you know, any question of the level of sophistication or artificial intelligence, and whether that can really constitute a relationship and in a different sense. So I am focused on the felt... the felt relationship rather than, rather than any kind of cognitive standard.

Yeah. And there was a moment in the paper where you comment on how it appears that human care is actually... can be extended really easily outside of ourselves, and to all kinds of other things outside of ourselves?

Yes, I mean, I, anecdotally, I do think that's true, I think of, you know, it's easily apparent in our relationships with domesticated animals. But there's been much, much further work, important recent book by Maria Puidilla Villa Casa, on a Care extending to the ecological realm and talking about about soil, especially and thinking thinking with care in those contexts. I do think that, that we can can feel ties of, of care in these different directions. The question is, then what is relevant to, to care ethics and to care as a critical analytic in ethical and political life? And there are places where I think that that can be quite useful, and probably some that are less so.

(laughs) Do you think that our care robots care robots here to stay?

And it seems that they are. I think, especially once we kind of nuanced the discussion of what what a robot is, and we're looking at this whole range of devices, that... then then it certainly seems like care robots are, are infiltrating all aspects of our technologies and maybe just kind of becoming a more a more de facto part of, of everyday life. But even with the more specific case of kind of companion robot animals, I think of the there have been some some more affordable and easily accessible devices of that sort. My, my grandmother actually just recently got a a robotic cat that that is now under $100, and is easily purchased online.

Wow.

And so she did that without without asking me about, about the cat, or about talking about this article, of course.

(laughs)

But I think that is a huge testament to the accessibility and increasing uses of this, this kind of technology.

Yes, and what when it makes me think about in your article prompted me to think about why we call them care robots in the first place, it's kind of like they are they are doing something or some of them are doing something there was there were some that you mentioned that are clearly more sort of functional, they help nurses move patients or something like that the care of the cat, or Paro, the seal is more like the care we extend to them. And then emotional feedback, perhaps, I'm not sure.

You know, I don't know that there are kind of hard limits on on what kinds of technology some people could develop that kind of effective relation to, but, but certainly within the case of, of these companion robots, they're, you know, the the kind of nature of of that connection is, is interesting to explore, but it but it definitely seems to be present in in a fair, fair portion of the populations using it that have been studied with people, you know, especially in institutional settings, where these are often very expensive technologies. And so so Paro, for instance, might, there might be one or two at a given institutional living situation. And so no one person has sole custody of Paro. But is kind of visited by by the robot on a number of times a week. And particular people will have their names for, for the robot and will continue conversations that they had recently left off with the robot and, and there is a sense of continuity and a sense of relationship that kind of develops. And some of that is certainly kind of aided by the level of sophistication that the robot does have. So it can learn some words and, and responds differently to a to a harsh rather than a gentle touch. So there, there is some kind of feeling of a two way engagement there. But even if we're solely looking at, at the the human side of attachment, it does seem that with very little in terms of sophisticated technology, humans can still develop what it what can be felt as a significant attachment.

Fascinating. So I guess we're sort of coming towards the end of our time chatting about this, I feel like we could keep talking. It's so interesting to me. But I wonder if there's a sort of primary takeaway message that you'd like people to glean from the paper that you hope they'll keep with them?

Sure, so. So the the ultimate takeaway of the article for me is that neither technophobia nor technophilia really makes sense for care ethics, and that we need to be looking at the structural conditions that are shaping the provision of care. And that those those conditions are the are the rightful target of our critiques and that on on an individual level, there may be real possibility for engagement and effective ties between humans and all sorts of kinds of others. And that the power of care as a as a critical resource is something that has to be reestablished in every context, and is something that can so easily be made complicit with systems of domination that we must be vigilant to its use and uptake, while still working to push back against old paradigms of care as a as a maternal or dyadic relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me Mercer that was so interesting.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Oh it was my pleasure. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode of FAB Gab. You can find the paper we've discussed linked in this episode's notes along with the transcript. FAB Gab is hosted by me Kathryn MacKay and produced by Madeline Goldberger. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, Radio Public, Anchor or wherever else you get your podcasts of quality. Thanks again for listening. Bye.