1. To mourn a robotic dog is to be truly human
Andrew Brown. The Guardian. Thursday, March 12
The funerals of Sony’s Aibo dogs that will never work again are a perfectly religious act
When a Japanese pet is ceremonially cremated, the owners return after the ashes have cooled to sift
through them with special chopsticks, picking out the bones one by one and transferring them to
their final resting urn. This was the strangest thing I knew about Japanese funeral rites until I
discovered that Buddhist priests there now hold services for robot pets as well.
Between 1999 and 2006, the Sony corporation made and sold 150,000 small robot dogs, known as
Aibos, which animated at the joints, and were equipped with a microphone and speakers so that they
could respond to simple commands. Unlike real dogs, they required no exercise and no food, and
they never excreted either. They did, however, mime peeing, lifting their legs and producing what
one owner described as “an indescribably beautiful tinkling sound”.
But what really made Aibos resemble real dogs was not their shape or their behaviour. It was that
their owners loved them.
When Sony discontinued the product line, the dogs already made continued to work, and to be
loved, and the company would replace the parts that wore out until as late as last year. One
company, made from former Sony engineers, specialised in reviving defunct robot pets. Then the
supply failed. Dogs that stopped working would never start again.
Buddhist priests, who already perform most of the pet cremations in Japan, are now combining two
existing traditions – the love with which pets are treated as family members, and the newer habits
of mourning toys or dolls when their time is over. A photo essay shows the result: elderly Japanese
holding their defunct Aibos in a line, and the later shelving of the bodies, each labelled carefully with
their name and place of origin. A prayer is also said, to release the spirit from its metal carcass. After
that, the Aibos can become “organ donors” and be plundered for spare parts.
This isn’t just a story about Japan. It’s really about the question of what makes things alive to us.
The answer is surely that anything that can die seems alive, and anything that seems alive will
sometime die. One way of asking what is going on is to ask why exactly we are so sure that the
robot dogs never were alive. It can’t be purely because they are robots, working according to
mechanical and chemical laws. So are we, so far as we can tell. Certainly, the “mentalistic
behaviourism” espoused by Dan Dennett holds that life is no more than mechanism of a particular
sort, which we, ourselves mechanisms, interpret as something more: thought is merely behaviour
that we think is thought. So, if computers can some day be intelligent, and appear to us as persons,
why shouldn’t robot dogs?
It is true that an Aibo has a behavioural repertoire more limited than that of even the most stupid
dog. But plenty of living things have even less of a range of behaviour. We don’t doubt that slime
moulds or nematode worms are alive, even though they do very little with their lives.
Presumably, the real difference is concealed by the indescribably beautiful tinkling sounds: an Aibo
does not have any physical transactions with the universe. It does not feed itself or reproduce. It is
possible to imagine a robot doing all of these things, or their analogues, but Aibos do not.
They do, however, die. They are, as the funerals make quite clear, entirely loved by some of their
owners at least. In this their nearest analogue is actually theVelveteen Rabbit in a wonderful
children’s classic – or the altogether grimmer, darker and more realistic version of Russell Hoban’s
Mouse and His Child. Both stories deal with children’s toys who come alive because they are loved
and which can properly be mourned as a result.
The funerals of the robot dogs are in this sense a perfectly religious act. The priests don’t promise
that the Aibos will go to heaven, any more than they do forreal pets. But the ceremonial gives shape
and habitation to a grief. We’re seldom more completely human than when we mourn things that
could never mourn us in return.

2. Comprehension questions and debate:
1. Find 5 words you find interesting/challenging and devise an exercise for your partner
as follows then swap papers:
1. (past participle) To burn the body of a person who has died.
2. (adjective)...
2. Take notes of all the interesting points/arguments in the text.
3. Discuss the following statement: "It is utterly ridiculous to mourn let alone bury robotic
pets"