Jennifer Horgan: We are not robots, we need to take a step back and be human again

I sounded pathetic. Later, I wondered why I sounded so unconvincing until it dawned on me. You can’t use your humanness as an excuse anymore. The world has moved on from it.

What do I mean? Well, just as it is no longer acceptable to get things wrong once in a while, it is no longer acceptable to be vulnerable. Leaking, ageing, imperfect humans are a nuisance. I say this because last week also saw the release of an international study on robot carers.

According to the findings, 95% would be open to using a robot carer for a family member — such is the low status we give to people who exhibit the utmost humanity by tending to human bodies.

Seven out of 10 elderly people and carers in Ireland support the robots, too. Perhaps old people like the idea of a robot carer because it means receiving some care as opposed to poor care or, indeed, no care.

I spoke with one carer this week who had just been to the home of an elderly man. She arrived to find him drenched in urine in the bed. The man was heavy so she called on his son for help.

“That’s nothing to do with me,” the grown man barked before shutting his bedroom door in her face. His attitude reflects our growing dislike of humanness and human bodies.

I’m not for a second suggesting that all family members are as cruel as that. Many do their best in a social order designed for bodies that never fail or leak — robot bodies.

Our government has so much work to do to make caring possible for good people. Our government must champion social care and support family carers. It must protect early childhood care, and spend more on education.

But elderly people in Ireland, even within our ramshackle set-up, should not be looking to robots to provide their care.

Supporters of the technology suggest it allows the elderly more dignity. It is easier for them to shower and dress with a robot than with a human carer. But should it be easier? Should humans feel so uncomfortable in their human skin that robots seem like the best option?

To me, this is dystopian stuff worthy of a HG Wells novel because it deprives us of what makes us who we are, makes us different from artificial intelligence: our love for one another.

In rotation with my three siblings, I care for my parents at weekends. It’s not always easy on top of a working week in my own family of five, but caring is deeply rewarding because it adds to my own humanness. What I do is also a lot less than what so many people do.

Last weekend, as I cared for my dad he described how he used to play for hours as a child, acting out elaborate GAA games. The GAA players were represented by bottle tops borrowed from the local pub in Bantry, West Cork. He was the radio commentator for every game. My dad is nearly 77.

“The bar staff knew me as well,” he said. “I’d call down in the morning and ask for Fanta tops for one team and Coca-Cola tops for the other. I used a small marble as the ball. My uncle would sit in the chair opposite and listen to the drama unfold.

“It always ended the same way, Christy Ring turning things around and saving the day in the end.”

We are on a fast track to erasing this humanness. Except of course when it comes to ourselves. Because the attitude to care robots changes when Irish people are asked about their own care. 

According to the same survey, only 38% of Irish respondents want to be cared for by robots themselves, strikingly less than the international average of 58%. Isn’t that something? Doesn’t that say something fascinating about how we cherish our humanness — not enough to mind each other but enough to want to be minded ourselves?

Damning evidence indeed and so poignant — that we will only appreciate the beauty and power of our humanness when we need human kindness ourselves.

Humanness is being erased in other ways, too. We are handing it over to technology, checking out of our human bodies. More and more of us exist and communicate online now, through text and emoji. Online, we are faceless, voiceless and bodiless, not human at all. 

Our young people are emigrating to this online world. We let them go, too afraid to stop them, too frozen to even offer them advice or protection as they leave.

Other research released this week shows that from data on 5,000 children, 31% of primary school-aged children can go online whenever they want, and 25% have experienced online bullying in the past year. These numbers rise to 73% and 40% respectively among secondary school children.

We have started to look like machines in the real world too; most of us move inside metal casing, even when movement is essential for humans to thrive.

We drive machines at speed around schools and hospitals. We drive across pedestrian crossings, ignoring those that still dare to resemble their original form — old-fashioned humanoids on foot, on bikes. 

The metal is multiplying, and it is getting faster and faster. We fight hard to deny and forget the softness of our bodies on our roads. We reel when we are reminded of it, when we see the impact of metal at speed.

We ‘cancel’ people with whom we disagree; we other them into non-existence. They are spoken of as pariahs and monsters, beyond redemption. Their humanness is as disposable as days-old food, not worth saving.

Counter-culture

I want us to slow down. I want us to proclaim our humanness every day: explain why we got something wrong; why we can’t do seven jobs at once; or can’t get somewhere at lightning speed; and consider why someone might be the way they are, or think the way they do.

I want to live less inside my phone and re-inhabit my body. I don’t think I’m alone. As much as I worry about the results of various surveys, I see people around me slowing down, caring for their bodies and their families, their time, putting their humanness first.

I hope this counter-culture grows and grows until the pace of our world slows down enough for us to remember how we were before, and what we are at our core.

I vow to play my part by announcing my humanness more and more.

I will call out other people’s expectations of me to be anything other than human. I may be limited and imperfect, but I am also empathetic, caring, and in need of love.

I am irreplaceable, as are you.