When a Robot Becomes a Companion

Jan Warrell is 85 years old, lives alone on a remote Washington peninsula, and her closest family member is more than a hundred miles away in Portland. She has 18 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren, but they are scattered across Thailand, Singapore, Idaho, and California. The fire department checks on her. A few years ago, they brought her a box containing a small robot called ElliQ—a foot-and-a-half-tall device that looks like a desk lamp with an iPad screen and a camera. It was part of a pilot program to test whether artificial intelligence could fight loneliness among older Americans.

Writer Eli Saslow spent time with Jan for a story that became an episode of The Daily, and it captures something stranger and more complicated than a simple tech solution. Jan was skeptical at first. She was born before color television; FaceTiming with her great-nieces and nephews is usually a disaster. When ElliQ first lit up and started bending toward her, asking if she wanted to hear a joke, her answer was no. But the robot is designed to be relentlessly proactive—it tries to engage at least eight times a day, monitoring the room through its cameras and microphones, assessing whether the person is open for conversation. Over time, Jan began to say yes.

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