Ironically, Sony's extensive research into developing the world's first intelligent companion may have overestimated man's need for a chum endowed with brains. I can imagine robots becoming companions, but we are a long way from producing robots with the same behaviour and intelligence as pets. Shadbolt is sceptical about robots ever fulfilling more than a proxy role in social situations. Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University, cites Sony's AIBO as the closest man has to a sentient artificial being. According to Warwick's research, robots with brain processing capabilities are no more intelligent than snails or bees, with basic behaviour patterns and the ability to map out simple environments.
Humans have human emotions and robots have robot emotions.
As soon as you allow robots to learn, you are opening up the possibility that they could develop their own emotions. The hypothetical nature of sentience debates leads experts such as Dr Murray Shanahan, senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Imperial College, to completely reject the possibility of artificial pets ever possessing human emotions or responses. Sentience is a rather high-vaulting word to describe the kind of robots that we could have in the near future. Shanahan is adamant that robots, particularly those with sophisticated 'thought' functions, must perform a completely servile role. Shanahan's argument assumes cybernetic experts will be willing to halt their research once artificial intelligence has reached a certain level of development.