adeelarshad82 writes from a report via The Week: The prospect of cities becoming sentient is “fast becoming the new reality,” according to one paper. Take Tel Aviv for example, where everyone over the age of 13 can receive personalized data, such as traffic information, and can access free municipal Wi-Fi in 80 public zones. But in a future where robots sound and objects look increasingly sentient, we might be less inclined to seek out behaviors to abate our loneliness. Indeed, one recent study titled “Products as pals” finds that exposure to or interaction with anthropomorphic products — which have characteristics of being alive — partially satisfy our social needs, which means the human-like robots of tomorrow could kill our dwindling urge to be around other humans.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=10539501&smallembed=1