Letter: In love with a bot

From John Grant

One of the short stories by science-fiction writer John Wyndham in the collection The Seeds of Time is called “Compassion circuit”.

In it, a robot helps a less physically able woman move around the house, using “affective computing” software as featured in your article (3 December, p 42).

As the article indicated, there is a potential downside to this technology, in that the user may be deceived into thinking the machine is human.

This, too, was highlighted in “Compassion circuit”. Wyndham displayed considerable foresight – his story was written half a century ago.

Victoria Point, Queensland, Australia