They have a soul: memorial services for robot dogs are held in Japanese temples

In a Buddhist temple, a quite standard funeral service is held: the smell of incense, a monk reading a sutra. Only the deceased at the ceremony are not quite ordinary. On this day, broken robot dogs are buried in the temple.

Source: Daily Mail

Sony's AIBO is the world's first home robot dog equipped with artificial intelligence. The first generation of robotic pets was released in 1999, and the initial batch of three thousand dogs was sold in 20 minutes, despite the high price. The robot was equipped with a variety of sensors, a camera and a microphone, and the latest generation could even speak.

Sony discontinued the release of robops in 2006 due to high competition in the market. Now the owners, whose pets are hopelessly broken, send them to the FUN company so that they can become donors for those dogs that can still be repaired. But before that, the owners accompany their pets on their last journey.

A line of more than a hundred robots lined up on the altar in the temple. Each one has a tag that says which family this "dog" is from. It may seem strange to you that a priest holds a memorial service for inanimate creatures, but the owners of robops believe that they have a soul.

For 70-year-old Hideko Mori, the demise of robops was a real disaster. AIBO lived in her house for about eight years, and the woman was always sure that it was much more convenient than getting a real dog.

In May 2017, AIBO simply stopped moving. The concerned woman wrote to Sony, where she was asked to contact FUN. And there the dog was put on his feet in two months.

The 61-year-old employee of the company says that the owners of robots consider him more a doctor than an engineer, because the word "repair" is not very appropriate in this case.

The main problem in repairing robots is time. The "treatment" may take weeks or even months due to a shortage of spare parts. Dozens of AIBO are now "hospitalized" and waiting for their turn. The only source of spare parts were "dead" robots, which become donors, but only after the ceremony in the temple. FUN employees say they don't take the robots apart before the memorial service. After the ceremony, the soul of the pet returns to the owners, and the robot becomes an ordinary machine, and then you can start working.

Now the memorial service for robots surprises many. But there are more and more robots equipped with artificial intelligence, which means that such ceremonies will become commonplace.