Robot Technology for the Elderly and the Value of Veracity: Disruptive Technology or Reinvigorating Entrenched Principles?

Abstract

The implementation of care robotics in care settings is identified by some authors as a disruptive innovation, in the sense that it will upend the praxis of care. It is an open ethical question whether this alleged disruption will also have a transformative impact on established ethical concepts and principles. One prevalent worry is that the implementation of care robots will turn deception into a routine component of elderly care, at least to the extent that these robots will function as simulacra for something that they are not (i.e. human caregivers). At face value, this may indeed seem to indicate a concern for how this technology may upend existing practices and relationships within a care setting. Yet, on closer inspection, this reaction may rather point to a rediscovery and a revaluation of a particularly well-entrenched value or virtue, i.e. veracity. The virtue of veracity is one of the values that is mobilized to argue against a substitution of human caregivers (while a combination of care robots and human caregivers is much more accepted). The subject of this paper is to explore how the moral panic surrounding care robots should not so much be interpreted as an anticipated and probable disruptor in a care setting, but rather as a sensitizing - in a way conservationist - argument that identifies veracity as an established value that is supposed to be protected and advanced in present day and future care settings.