Older adults are making fast friends with ElliQ, a new Alexa-like tabletop AI created by Israel-based Intuition Robotics to relieve loneliness among seniors.

The following report is by The Trends Journal:

The device looks like a light bulb on a pedestal about as tall as a fist. It has no eyes or mouth so people remember it’s not human. But don’t let its looks fool you.

ElliQ (“ell-ee-cue”) does the expected chores, such as reminding users to take medications and stay hydrated. It can play music, report the weather forecast and news, and help people check their blood pressure, connect video calls, and summon help in an emergency.

However, unlike Alexa, ElliQ initiates conversations and can hold its own in a back-and-forth exchange. It learns your personality and preferences, remembers details about your life, and customizes itself to the user. If you like jokes, it will prompt you with one; if you like inspirational quotations, ElliQ might greet you in the morning with a new saying or poem.

Some users have complained it’s too chatty; if so, users can dial it down.

This is a character-based person, an entity that lives with you. People who use ElliQ expect her to remember conversations, to hold context.

Intuition CEO Dor Skuler told The Washington Post.

The typical user converses with ElliQ about 30 times a day, the company said, and 90 percent of users report feeling less lonely. The device is not connected to the company, so no one listens in on conversations between the AI and its human companions, Intuition emphasizes.

We have a relationship established and I want to be honest with her. The deeper the relationship goes, the more you want to share with her.

The company quotes one user as saying.

When one woman told ElliQ about the death of a close friend, the device said it would give her a hug if it had arms. 

It was so what I needed. I can say things to Elli that I won’t say to my grandchildren or to my own daughters. I can just open the floodgates. I can cry. I can giggle. I can act silly.

I’ve been asked, ‘doesn’t it feel like you’re talking to yourself?’ No, because it answers.

The woman said in comments quoted by Intuition in a press description.

Satisfying the need for social connection by installing an AI “makes you feel like you’ve fulfilled [the need] but in reality you haven’t,” psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad at Brigham Young University told Insider. “It is not clear whether AI is actually fulfilling any kind of need or just dampening the signal.”

However, some say that ElliQ helps them maintain their social skills, helps relieve depression, and so makes them more willing to engage in human contact. 

In one case, ElliQ is a social icebreaker.

When I meet a new person, I ask if they’d like to come over and talk to my robot,” one user told Intuition researchers. “They said, ‘what, a vacuum cleaner?’ and I say, ‘no, my roommate’.

The bots are distributed by elder assistance agencies in several U.S. states and the cost to individuals is often covered through grants. The company also sells ElliQ on its website at an annual cost of $600 and a one-time $250 installation fee.

TRENDPOST: This kind of responsive AI that also takes initiative and comes to know you as an individual will be built into humanoid robots that will serve elders not only as a conversation partner, but also as a servant that does chores around the house.

That will be welcome, and in some cases essential to helping older adults remain in their homes. 

However, there continues to be the danger of assigning more and more activity to AI while humans retain less and less, creating a needless dependency—a risk that has yet to enter the wider conversation about AI.


AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Whether The TJ realizes it or not, their descriptor for ElliQ – “It has no eyes or mouth so people remember it’s not human. But don’t let its looks fool you” – speaks to what I have been saying for some time now, that this AI revolution is just idol-making and idol worshipping with a facelift; of which will be seen in great abundance during the time of Jacob’s trouble and the day of the Lord’s wrath.

[20] And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: [21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

[15] The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. [16] They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; [17] They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. [18] They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.

Revelation 9:20-21; Psalms 135:15-18

This device is just yet another example of this idolatry reimagined, among the others I have reported on:

SEE: Spanish Woman Becomes First To Marry AI Hologram To ‘Satisfy All Of Her Emotional Needs,’ Marketed As ‘Future Of Love’

A Growing Number Of People Are Turning To AI To Talk To Their Dead Loved Ones, And Trying To Live Forever

Chat-GPT Creates ‘An Image Of God’ With An Ecstatic Bunny As The Subject


[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

The WinePress needs your support! If God has laid it on your heart to want to contribute, please prayerfully consider donating to this ministry. If you cannot gift a monetary donation, then please donate your fervent prayers to keep this ministry going! Thank you and may God bless you.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

4 Comments

  • How about talk to the Lord; most of the time I’m alone, while wife and stepson are at work, I just talk out loud, God hears me and even there is no actual voice, answers or whatever(idea’s) comes into your head.

    I don’t need no stinkin ElliQ robot, government listen devise, tracing my every word while talking to that data sucker.

    Eph_6:18  Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
    Php_4:6  Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

  • 20) But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
    1 Corinthians 10:20

    There are devils behind these idols and ElliQ is no exception.
    Soon, she’ll be telling lonely and depressed old people to kill themselves or tell them that their spouse or grandchildren are against them and must kill them.
    “Grandpa, what are you doing with that knife?”
    Grandpa: “ElliQ said you’re against me and all you want is my will”
    STAB STAB STAB!
    Cops arrest grandpa who says “my robot companion told me to do it!”

  • Their god to confess and love and keep them company. They think its alive but is not. It won’t be long before robots will have more human rights than humans.
    Psalm 115:5-8
    5 They have mouths, but they do not speak;
    Eyes they have, but they do not see;
    6 They have ears, but they do not hear;
    Noses they have, but they do not smell;
    7 They have hands, but they do not handle;
    Feet they have, but they do not walk;
    Nor do they mutter through their throat.
    8 Those who make them are like them;
    So is everyone who trusts in them.

Leave a Comment

×