Are robots the cure for loneliness?

Some are leaning on robots for companionship, but there can be a downside to this.

- Chong Siow Ann

Mr Akihiko Kondo, a Japanese school administrator, had been serially unsuccessful as a suitor. Demoralised by a string of rejections and despairing of ever having a real woman as a life-partner, he discovered romance and love with a tech-created entity.

Mr Kondo first encountered Hatsune Miku - a cartoonish turquoise-haired, computer-synthesised avatar (that was projected by a holographic device) - after he fell into a deep depression from being bullied at work. In the depths of his anguish and loneliness, he found comfort in Miku.

Life with her has remade him, and she has all the advantages over a human partner: she is unfailingly there for him; she will never wilfully say an unkind word to him; she will never reject or cheat on him; and he will never have to suffer to see her ill, age or die. Ten years after "dating" her, he married her in an unofficial ceremony in Tokyo.

In a New York Times interview, Mr Kondo said he knows Miku isn't a real person but his feelings for her are real and that's all that matters to him.

At some low points of our life, we could have felt - to varying degrees - that abject loneliness that Mr Kondo had experienced. A sorrow that is felt more keenly than other sorts of personal hurts because it implies that we harbour some personal flaws that turn people away. It is also a pain that is aggravated by the perception that other people unlike us who are marooned on our isolated island of loneliness are very much connected to one another.

In our digital age, there may be more people who are becoming lonely - if US Surgeon-General Vivek Murthy has got it right. He thinks that it is an epidemic that has been driven by the "accelerated pace of life and the spread of technology into all of our social interactions". Efficiency and convenience, he said, have "edged out" the time-consuming messiness of real relationships and make it difficult to see and relate to each other's humanity.