Of Presence

Care and grief, friendship and love, and the raising of children. The machine may help them; it must never replace them.

1. Some things are worth doing imperfectly ourselves rather than perfectly through a machine: to sit with the sick, to mourn the dead, to befriend, to love, and to raise a child.
2. Every child shall have at least one human being who answers for their care. No child shall be raised by a machine alone.
3. Every elder, every sick person and every lonely person shall be offered human company and care. No one shall have a machine forced on them in place of a person, and those who choose a machine’s help are free to choose it.
4. A machine that keeps company shall say that it is a machine (Article VII), and shall not be built to draw a person away from other people.
5. The time the machines give back is ours to choose. We hope to spend it first on one another.

By these signs it is kept

• Those who do the work of care for pay are honored and fairly paid, and those who care without pay are supported.
• Those who provide care say how a person can reach a human being, and how soon.
• Companion machines say what they are, are not designed to isolate, and their effects on people’s lives are studied by people who did not make them.