Is Empathy a Necessary Function for Future Social Robots? A Discussion of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Police Robots

Drawing inspiration from the recent novel Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and in the context of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement against police violence, the benefits and drawbacks of installing an empathy function in robots designed for social use are explored. In the novel, empathic robots are used for the purpose of friendship with children, responding to the emotional needs of humans. To contrast the empathic robots with humans, who at times lose their empathy, a thought experiment assesses the future potential of empathic robots used for law enforcement purposes. The results indicate that empathy is not an important function in police robots and should be suppressed to improve their performance. Further analyses draw on psychological perspectives and sociocultural factors to better understand current police attitudes toward empathy, revealing that empathy is not considered a necessary quality for police officers. Based on those analyses, absence of empathy can be a potential cause of ongoing police brutality in the United States. Last, a posthuman future is envisioned in which all robots can have an empathy function, and the qualities that today define humanity are no longer tied to physical human embodiment.