Battle engaged troops develop social bonding with robots in battle

[Naveed Yaseen]

LAHORE: Warriors have long spoken of the bonds forged in combat and of becoming a “band of brothers”. Thousands of robots now fight with humans on modern battlefields. This has added new twists to the psychology of war. “One of the psychologically interesting things is that these systems aren’t designed to promote intimacy, and yet we’re seeing these bonds being built with them,” says Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution defence analyst. Singer cited many accounts of soldiers feeling strong affection for their robots. Such bonds have also resulted in soldiers risking their lives for their robots. A soldier ran 164 feet under machine gun fire to retrieve a robot. And several teams have given their robots promotions, awards and a military funeral. This attachment to robots stemmed in part from the human brain’s mirror-neuron system, which fires up whenever watching the movement of someone or something. The system helped form the foundation for empathy, but could also lead people to project personalities and emotions onto objects. daily times monitor

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