Social robots are increasingly being deployed to address social isolation and loneliness, particularly among older adults. Clips on social media attest that individuals availing themselves of this option are pleased with their robot companions. Yet, some people find the use of social robots to meet fundamental human emotional needs disturbing. This article clarifies and critically evaluates this response. It sets forth a framework for loneliness, which characterizes one kind of loneliness as involving an affective experience of lacking human relations that provide certain social goods. Next, the article discusses social robots and critically reviews the literature on the ethics of using them in light of this loneliness characterization. Third, we present a normative argument connecting the philosophical critique of loneliness-as-absence with the design and deployment of social robots. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for public health and for interrogating the aims of commercial companies who make social robots.

社交机器人越来越多地被用来解决社会孤立和孤独感，尤其是老年人。社交媒体上的剪辑证明，使用此选项的人对他们的机器人伙伴感到满意。然而，一些人发现使用社交机器人来满足人类基本情感需求令人不安。本文澄清并批判性地评估了这一回应。它提出了一个孤独的框架，将一种孤独描述为一种缺乏提供某些社会福利的人际关系的情感体验。接下来，本文讨论了社交机器人，并根据这种孤独特征批判性地回顾了使用它们的伦理文献。第三，我们提出了一个规范性论证，将孤独作为缺席的哲学批判与社交机器人的设计和部署联系起来。最后，我们得出了我们的分析对公共健康和质疑制造社交机器人的商业公司的目标的影响。