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The Death of Aibo, the Birth of Softbank's Child-Robot

Posted by timothy on from the product-obsolescence-as-murder dept.

New submitter pubwvj writes: Sony is killing off their robot Aibo, stranding the 150,000 or so owners with no support, repairs or parts other than cannibalism. Now we have another Japanese company, SoftBank, releasing a robotic 'child.' Eventually, they too will discontinue the production of parts and support, beginning the process of killing off all those 'children' that are spawned. As robotics become (far) more advanced at what point will it be murder for a company to discontinue a product line?

1 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Just print your own parts by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    By the time we have to worry about sentience, won't we have good enough 3d printing?

    Of course it's also a little worrying to imagine an AI that's sentient and impossible to murder.