The questionable ethics of treating autistic children with robots

One day in the spring of 2017, at the department of clinical psychology at Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, a robot stood on a table facing a child. The robot was a half-metre tall humanoid in brightly coloured plastic, like a toy. Its round eyes lit up as it spoke, its voice childlike. Across the table sat a young boy in a Pokémon T-shirt, playing a game where he had to figure out which object the lit-up eyes are looking at. Over the table-top between the pair was a horizontal display, showing two digital items, a flower and a tree.