Could robots contribute to social well being? A psychoanalytical perspective
Résumé
Ephaïstos was in Ancient Greece the god of robots even if those robots have mainly been war machines built in order to besiege Persian cities. Today, a robot needs only 10 years to reach comet Philae but the dream and fantasy to build and use an artificial intelligent machine to satisfy our imaginary function is probably stronger than it was in Athens. It is not a surprise if robots are usually considered by the psychoanalytical research community like fantasies builded by scientists, engineers, novelists or Stanley Kubrick. On one hand, robots are not human because they do not have a subjective existence through speaking (think of "parlêtres" from Jacques Lacan defining human subject as human because he or she speaks). But on the other hand, we also have to consider the fact that in certain circumstances, a robot can be more human than a human because it has no unconscious and, ironically, no intrapsychic dilemmas.