Me and My Friend, The Robot: On Recognising Our (Apparent) Mutual Love

I argue that robots that currently exist cannot be friends with humans. This is because human-robot interaction (HRI) fails to satisfy at least one necessary condition of neo-Aristotelian friendship – which I call the ‘Mutual Recognition Condition’. This condition stipulates that for any two agents, A and B, to be in a relationship of friendship, it must be the case that A recognises B’s (apparent) love, and B recognises A’s (apparent) love. The paper begins by motivating and exploring the mutual recognition condition more generally, by appealing to depictions of human-human friendship in film. Next, it examines the methods by which a human can recognise (apparent) love, outlining two possible methodologies: ‘Symbol reading’ and ‘Mind-reading’. The former involves perceiving symbols of love and inferring that those symbols are indicative of love. The second, ‘mind-reading’, attempts to explain how we can come to represent others’ mental states, such as love, more generally. Here, I argue that humans can use both methods to recognise the (apparent) love of a robot. I then consider whether a robot can recognise that it is (apparently) loved by a human. I argue that robots cannot mindread (because they don’t have minds to mindread with), nor can they meaningfully recognise symbols of love. As such, HRI cannot satisfy the mutual recognition condition for friendship. In short, humans and robots are not friends.