Cogito

In Epic Trust Limited v Ruscoe [2024] NZHC 21 Palmer J states 

 [1] My judgment of 6 September 2023 outlines a summary of the context of these proceedings: [1] Cryptopia Ltd (Cryptopia) is a company that ran a cryptocurrency exchange. In January 2019, there was a serious hack of Cryptopia’s cryptocurrency and the loss of some $30 million of its cryptocurrency holdings. In May 2019, the shareholders of Cryptopia appointed Mr David Ruscoe and Mr Malcolm Moore as liquidators of the company under s 241(2)(a) of the Companies Act 1993. Mr Ruscoe and Mr Moore are chartered accountants, partners in the firm Grant Thornton New Zealand Ltd, and licenced insolvency practitioners. The liquidation involves complex arrangements regarding around 370 functioning cryptocurrencies owned by some 960,000 holders of accounts with positive balances in around 180 countries. 

[2] On 8 April 2020, the High Court determined that each type of cryptocurrency is intangible property held by Cryptopia as trustee for the benefit of all the account holders of that currency. Cryptopia itself is a beneficiary of some of those trusts. The High Court’s judgment sets out a more detailed account of the factual background of the liquidation. 

The liquidators of Cryptopia have applied for directions about distribution of the cryptocurrency assets. On 13 November 2023, Epic Trust Ltd (Epic Trust) sought to make submissions on the application. Epic Trust is owned by Mr Victor Cattermole. As explained in my judgment of 15 November 2023, Epic Trust had not filed and served a notice of appearance, an application to be joined, or a notice of opposition to the application for directions. I declined to hear Epic Trust at that hearing. I noted the evidence provided to date raised doubts about whether Epic Trust really had an interest in the proceedings. 

[3] On 14 November 2023, Epic Trust filed and served an application to be joined as a respondent and a notice of opposition to the application for directions with supporting affidavits. I heard the application to be joined, which was opposed by the liquidators, on 11 December 2023. ... 

 [8] Mr Henry, for Epic Trust, submits: 

(a) Epic Trust is an undisputed owner of Cryptopia cryptocurrencies as a purchaser for value from a group of beneficiaries, specifically and namely Mr Joshua Stevenson. The agreements are under an arbitral rule. Epic Trust is appointed as agent until settlement and there is a right of subrogation to Mr Stevenson’s claims in the liquidation. Accordingly, Epic Trust has a right to appear and be named in the proceeding and to make applications, be bound by the Court’s decision, and to appeal. 

(b) The proceeding is not a liquidation proceeding but a trustee seeking orders for distribution of trusts. The trustees must disclose to beneficiaries the assets held in the trusts under s 51 of the Trusts Act 2019, for the beneficiaries to formulate their claims. None of the beneficiaries are represented before the Court. 

(c) The beneficiaries’ agreement with Cryptopia was fundamentally breached by Cryptopia whenever it stopped operating the trading platform, entitling a beneficiary to cancel the agreement under s 37(1)(c) of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 (CCLA) and Epic Trust to claim relief under s 48(b). So Cryptopia’s terms and conditions with the beneficiaries, including the prohibition against assignment, are no longer valid. Otherwise, the dispute resolution clause would also be valid, contrary to the liquidators’ proposed application. 

(d) Epic Trust denies its acquisition of beneficial interests for the COG digital coins in Mr Cattermole’s metaverse is a scam. Those agreements are for the beneficiaries to assess and to decide whether to accept or reject. Mr Cattermole’s conviction in 2002 was not a minor crime and does not provide any proper basis for assuming he is involved in digital currencies in any similar way now. Epic Trust is not trying to be irresponsible in any way. xx 

[9] Mr Barker, for the liquidators, submits: (a) Epic Trust LLC is a one-euro Montenegrin company. There is no evidence on which Mr Henry can properly rely to say that Epic Trust has a relevant interest. It is not an account holder according to Cryptopia’s and the liquidators’ records. There is a genuine dispute as to whether Mr Stevenson has a claim. Even if he does, the purported assignment of his claim to Epic Trust is not valid. An agent has no ability to bring proceedings in its own name. The terms and conditions of the agreement between cryptocurrency owners and Cryptopia prohibit assignment and there is no evidence of cancellation. It is not obvious that term should be implicitly disapplied just because the exchange is no longer effective. If it were disapplied, the management of accountholder claims and verification would be even more complicated, which is not a cost that should be borne by the general body of account holders. 

(b) In the liquidators’ verification process, if an account holder is unable to recall the email address they used, there are seven to eight other indicators that can be used to satisfy the liquidators they are the account holder. An approximation of the balance of the holding is one of them. So, providing the balance to a claimant, which is the point of Epic Trust’s wish to be joined, could compromise the identification process. 

(c) It is not necessary for Epic Trust to be joined for the liquidators’ application to be determined. No one is named to represent the account holders because all issues could be spoken to by: counsel for the liquidators; Mr Watts KC as counsel assisting the Court regarding the interests of account holders; and Ms Cooper KC as counsel assisting the Court regarding the interests of creditors. All account holders were served with the application and leave was reserved for them to appear or apply to vary or rescind any orders made. 

(d) The Court should be reluctant to entertain any application from Epic Trust because Mr Cattermole is its shareholder. He has been held in contempt by the High Court on 7 July 2021 for improperly obtaining and retaining confidential information about Cryptopia including the email addresses of account holders. He appears to have breached the Court order in relation to the non-use of that information. The liquidators are concerned the offer to purchase account holders’ cryptocurrencies may have been misleading and deceptive. Furthering Epic Trust’s business venture is not a direct and direct interest in the relief sought by the liquidators. ... 

[19] Similarly, I do not need to decide on the validity of the purported sale and purchase agreement between Epic Trust and Mr Stevenson. Clause 6(a) expresses that agreement to be subject to the “laws of the Principality of Cogito ... to the exclusion of all other jurisdictions.” Cogito is a metaverse created by Mr Cattermole. It is not a foreign jurisdiction and its “law” is not foreign law recognised by this Court. Its “constitution” of April 2023 provides ultimate decision-making power to Mr Cattermole as Crown Prince of Cogito. There is no evidence of Cogito’s “laws”, including its “laws” of assignment of interests, even if this Court were to recognise the agreement as governed by those “laws”, which I do not.

The 'Principality of Cogito' is one of those internet-based pseudo states, unrecognised by any substantive nation and with laws - as indicated by Palmer J - that are unrecognised and do not supersede conventional law.  

Its website indicates

Cogito is revolutionary. A principality that breaks traditional borders and is open to e-residents from every country in the world. All human beings can apply, no age restrictions and no country restrictions. Our vision is that e-residents would support each other, to provide freedom of trade, interest-free finance, simple and low tax rates, education, and the ability to start investing. As an e-resident, we would encourage you to establish companies and asset protection trusts in the Principality of Cogito to protect your hard earned wealth. 

Principality of Cogito allows you to: 

build-wealth 

Build Wealth - The Principality of Cogito brings our global market together in the Cogito Metaverse, and in doing so breaks down boundaries and minimises local government control of finances. As a Cogito e-resident, you build wealth in a way that traditional banks and investment companies can not provide. You will eventually have access to a growing market of fractional investments, enabling small to large investments with a higher level of security and transparency. This will give you the ability to build wealth in a new way. 

flexibility 

Financial Flexibility - Cogito is the natural evolution to global digital currency where everyone is treated as equals. Cogito protects you from the financial limitations your government may place on citizens by not being influenced by exchange rates, by being taxed fairly, and by having an open and transparent global marketplace. 

security 

Security & Privacy - The Cogito Metaverse is built with the type of cutting edge security that you would expect from any financial institution around the world. In addition to this, the design of the Cogito Metaverse means that someone from outside the Cogito Metaverse cannot hack in and steal Cog and remove them from the Metaverse. This ensures there is a digital trail for any one attempting fraudulent behaviour.

The site explains 

In the context of the metaverse, the Principality of Cogito represents a virtual jurisdiction or digital realm within the broader Metaverse. It is a self-governing entity with its own set of rules and regulations. The principality operates under a constitution that serves as a fundamental framework for governance, protecting the rights and liberties of its citizens and ensuring that any attempts by potential tyrants to undermine those rights are exposed and prevented well in advance.

The Constitution indicates

The Head of State is the Prince, whose role is both as figurehead representing the Principality and over-arching protector of governance to ensure that any attempt by would-be tyrants to subvert or abuse the rights to Citizens is exposed and thwarted long before they achieve their objective. ... 

The succession to the Throne, opened by death or abdication, takes place by the direct and legitimate issue of the reigning Prince, by order of primogeniture with priority given to males within the same degree of kinship. In the absence of direct legitimate issue, the succession passes to the brothers and sisters of the reigning Prince and their direct legitimate descendants, by order of primogeniture with priority given to males within the same degree of kinship. If the heir, who would have acceded by virtue of the preceding paragraphs, is deceased or has renounced the Throne before the succession became open, the succession passes to his own direct legitimate descendants, by order of primogeniture with priority given to males within the same degree of kinship. If the application of the preceding paragraphs does not fill the vacancy of the Throne, the succession passes to an heir appointed by the Crown Council. The Throne can only pass to a person holding Cogito Citizenship on the day the succession opens. The Prince can exercise his sovereign powers if he has reached adulthood, fixed at the age of eighteen. During the Prince’s minority or in case the Prince is temporarily unable to exercise his functions, the Chairman of the Crown Council or some other member of the Crown Council elected by the Crown Council shall exercise the powers of the Prince.

There is no reference to corgis or baubles. Article 143-146 of the Constitution state 

The Prince is entitled to a personal remuneration calculated as one fortieth (2.5%) of the gross Transaction Tax charged as provided by law enacted as provided in the Property and Finance section of this Constitution. 

The Prince’s personal remuneration may not be changed except by an amendment to the Constitution. 

The category of Household Expenses shall include the Prince’s expenses incurred in the lawful discharge of his duties as representative of the Principality. 

The Prince’s Household Expenses shall be assessed and provided for in the National Budget adopted by the Executive Council as provided in the Property and Finance section of this Constitution

And if you want an AI as a citizen, the Principality ... 

is able to handle everything at once by recognising two classes of Citizen: Natural Person Citizens and AI Citizens. In the early stages, the Executive Ministers will be carefully selected AI Citizens with a built-in safeguard to allow Natural Person Citizens to take control away from AI Citizens if the latter appears to be running amok. 

What is an AI Citizen? 

The Prince selects a leading figure in public life whose advice the Prince believes could be valuable to the Commune of the Principality or who has demonstrated leadership and integrity in governance and would be both ethical and competent as a Minister of a particular regional commune or a particular portfolio. He also selects other personalities that he believes will provide a useful contrarian view to add some necessary diversity and cultural balance to avoid the risk of “herding” Citizens into a cultural prison. The Prince then “interviews” that personality using the latest and greatest AI tool available at the time to assess the responses and the accepts or rejects that personality as an AI Citizen. The Prince’s “interviews” with AI Citizens are available for review by Natural Person Citizens. AI Citizens are treated as adult Natural Person Citizens for all the purposes of this Constitution. Everything in this Constitution applies to all Citizens except for the safeguard regulations for voting and referendum

Leviathan

'The puzzle of the sovereign’s smile and the inner complexity of Hobbes’s theory of authorisation' by Eva Helene Odzuck in (2024) History of European Ideas comments 

Hobbes’s theory of authorisation poses numerous puzzles to scholars. The weightiest of these conundrums is a supposed contradiction between chapter 17 of Leviathan, that calls for unconditional submission to the sovereign, and chapter 21, that defends the liberties of the subject. This article offers a fresh perspective on the theory’s consistency, function and addressees. While existing research doubts the theory’s consistency, focuses on its immunisation function and on the subjects as the theory’s main addresses, the paper argues that Hobbes’s theory of authorisation is consistent with the doctrine of the liberty of subjects, and that it serves the dual purpose of immunising the sovereign against criticism and disciplining the sovereign via a counsel of memento mori: A hitherto underexplored element of authorisation theory is a reminder of the mortality of sovereignty directed at the sovereign to convince him to make restricted use of his absolute right to rule. Hobbes’s theory of authorisation can thus be read as part of a complex argumentative strategy for peace, rooted in a ‘liberal absolutism’ which is not as paradoxical as it sounds, and which is reflected in the frontispiece by the friendly smile of the sovereign.

Odzuck argues 

... there is considerable disagreement in Hobbes scholarship around what might have led Hobbes to develop and set out the theory of authorisation. Concerning the content and principal function of the authorisation theory there is less disagreement. The main content of the theory seems to be unconditional submission to the emerging sovereign: the subjects give up all their rights and authorise all actions of the emerging sovereign. This claim on the content seems to imply the claim on the theory’s main function: it is plausible to assume that the theory’s central purpose is to justify the absolute state and to immunise the sovereign from criticism; as authors of all the sovereign’s actions, the subjects cannot complain about them and – of course – have no right of resistance. Specific problems arise, however, from a reading of authorisation as unconditional; most notably, an unconditional authorisation of the sovereign’s actions appears to contradict the doctrine of the liberty of subjects set out in chapter 21 of Leviathan, which implies conditional authorisation. 

This article will propose a complex interpretation of Hobbes’s theory of authorisation that resolves this apparent contradiction and complements prevailing hypotheses around the theory’s function and principal addressee. My account and defence of this interpretation will proceed as follows: First, I will introduce readers to the theory of authorisation by analysing central passages of Leviathan (especially chapter 17) and argue that textual evidence seems to support the claim of unconditional authorisation of the sovereign’s actions. 

I will subsequently proceed to highlight problems of this reading of unconditional authorisation of the emerging sovereign that arise from the theory of the liberty of subjects (particularly as set out in chapter 21). 

I will then present my interpretation as a non-paradox theory of conditional and unconditional authorisation, on the basis of my analysis of chapters 14, 16, 17 and 21 of Leviathan, and defend my claims relating to the theory’s consistency and complexity. 

Concluding, I will summarise my findings, characterising Hobbes’s theory of authorisation as a complex argumentative strategy for peace that combines absolutist and liberal elements in a non-paradoxical way and that fulfils different functions for different addresses – one underexplored function being a memento mori for the sovereign.

Insurance and LLMs

'Artificial intelligence for health insurance: A proposed framework for FDA oversight' by Renee Sirbu, Jessica Morley and Luciano Floridi comments 

Despite mounting enthusiasm regarding the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) software as a medical device (SaMD) to clinical care and, consequently, the development of a new regulatory proposal for the federal oversight of AI/ML medical devices, little attention has been paid to the oversight of AI tools used by large insurers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has advanced an “Action Plan” for clinical AI (CAI) governance. However, the U.S. healthcare system remains threatened by the unregulated application of insurance AI (IAI). In this article, we use IAI tools in the Medicare Advantage (MA) prior authorization pathway as an illustrative case to argue that these technologies require further regulatory attention by the FDA. Specifically, we propose a redefinition of “medical device” under the 21st Century Cures Act as necessarily inclusive of IAI and advance an actionable framework for FDA oversight in the approval of IAI tools for deployment by large healthcare insurers. 

'AI as Agency Without Intelligence: On ChatGPT, Large Language Models, and Other Generative Models' by Luciano Floridi in (2023) Philosophy and Technology comments 

The article discusses the recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and the development of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. The article argues that these LLMs can process texts with extraordinary success and often in a way that is indistinguishable from human output, while lacking any intelligence, understanding or cognitive ability. It also highlights the limitations of these LLMs, such as their brittleness (susceptibility to catastrophic failure), unreliability (false or made-up information), and the occasional inability to make elementary logical inferences or deal with simple mathematics. The article concludes that LLMs, represent a decoupling of agency and intelligence. While extremely powerful and potentially very useful, they should not be relied upon for complex reasoning or crucial information, but could be used to gain a deeper understanding of a text’s content and context, rather than as a replacement for human input. The best author is neither an LLM nor a human being, but a human being using an LLM proficiently and insightfully.

Cartelisation

'COVID and structural cartelisation: market-state-society ties and the political economy of Pharma' by Matthew Sparke and Owain Williams in (2024) New Political Economy comments 

At first glance, the inequities in global access to effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 might simply be attributed to the raw power of so-called Big Pharma. These dominant pharmaceutical firms, after all, have long exercised concentrated control across global markets which have been structured in such a way as to support highly stable and globally entrenched forms of monopoly power (Malerba and Orsenigo 2015). The firms dominate over a series of product and national markets and a world-wide industrial sector involving high levels of profit and relatively low levels of competition. And while the rapid rise of Moderna and BioNTech would seem to tell a different story with their breakthrough mRNA vaccines for COVID, the larger pandemic picture appears on initial impressions to present a familiar outline of the dominant corporations like Pfizer using their market influence to secure yet more concentrated power and super-profits (Kollewe 2021). Forecasting full-year sales figures for COVID vaccines and Paxlovid totalling $56bn in late 2022, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla boasted to investors that: ‘[W]e believe our Covid-19 franchises will remain multibillion-dollar revenue generators for the foreseeable future’ (Smyth 2022). Such hubris has so far proven merited. More widely, dominant pharmaceutical firms make vast profits year on year, even in ‘normal times’, and exercise a huge degree of market power. But this focus on firms and their profits is only one part of the more complex picture of their power. 

We start with some important definitional grounding work. First, for the purposes of clarity about the firms in question we define dominant pharmaceutical firms as global companies that structure national and global markets and the scientific orientation and business practices of dependent life sciences sectors. These firms also use their dominance and substantial market power to stymie market entry and erect substantial barriers to would-be entrants, beyond natural barriers to entry or first mover advantages, and not least via the patent system and other strategic resources and business practices. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) and other formal partnership arrangements are used to further build in market power and dominance, and to structure and control a wider innovation system. These firms are large and have market power (Banares 2016), but, just as importantly, they also possess intimate connections with regulatory, legal and research infrastructures they have co-produced with states. 

Second, while there is a degree of distinction between traditional pharmaceutical firms and biopharmaceutical firms, we note that large pharmaceutical firms have adapted and integrated the potentially disruptive technologies, particularly in their M&A and joint venture strategies toward small biotech firms. They have done so not least to diversify sources of drug discovery away from chemical-led processes and secure wider micro-biological bases for product pipelines and to retain control over a wider innovations system. We also note that the market strategies of biopharmaceutical firms are doing much the same. This is observable in their dominant relations with a diverse pool of smaller firms and their structural control of networked innovations systems; including through their defensive, offensive and product-pipeline diversification uses of M&As and their strategic uses of patents and trade secrets. Both sets of dominant firms are closely involved in the overall bioeconomy and in the production of medicines, therapies and diagnostics from which they extract enormous profits. We therefore simply refer to each category together as dominant pharmaceutical firms, as is increasingly common in industry analysis which collapses the two sectors in terms of the reporting and ranking of such firms by profits, revenues and sales. 

Third, we are not concerned here with deriving a comprehensive list of which firms are leaders and those that are not. Following Banares (2016), we acknowledge the preeminence of 15 or 20 pharmaceutical firms which are large and global in reach. These firms exercise market power across core high-income country pharmaceutical markets (which constitute the vast majority of the world market in terms of value) and more widely dominate the related sectors they sit at the apex of. These firms have technological, functional and managerial advantages over would-be rivals that provide the necessary assets and capabilities for their sustained market power and dominance (see especially Banares 2016, pp. 102–143). 

However, these giant pharmaceutical firms not only have substantial market power but also possess very strong formal and informal relationships with core high income states, where many of them have deep historical links and deeply embedded institutional ties. We also view it as important that all dominant pharmaceutical firms are still predominantly headquartered in key High-Income Countries (HICs), and their histories and strong associations with their more than nominal host states constitute one of the key bureaucratic, infrastructural and political bases of their continued dominance, despite their status as global companies that operate transnationally. 

Overall, it is precisely the confluence of hybrid market and political power associated with pharmaceutical oligopoly that is central to our understanding of enduring dominance by core firms, as well as the mix of strategic resources, power and agency that cement and reproduce it over time with little variation in the top 15 or 20 firms, other than routine consolidation between them. 

Our first claim is that focusing simply on the big profits of dominant pharmaceutical firms, or recounting their market and innovation strategies, misses the still bigger picture of market-state relations and structural power involved in their stable market dominance and oligopolitical relations (Gleeson et al. 2023). At the centre of these powerful relations, we argue here, is a political economy of what can be described as multi-layered, multi-levelled and nested structural cartelisation. Indeed, the kinds of explicit structural collusion revealed by the COVID crisis and state-backed defense of monopoly rights to new vaccines went far beyond the old image of conniving corporate executives fixing prices and plotting against competitors in smoke-filled board rooms. Typically, these traditional kinds of anti-competitive collusion have been understood to be organised outside of and in opposition to the capitalist state’s vaunted interest in creating competitive markets. In the terms of Adam Smith’s early critique of cartels, the resulting monopolies came to be seen as ‘formidable to the government’ (Smith, 1776). But in the oligopolistic global pharmaceutical sector, we instead see the cartelisation of market concentration being repeatedly co-constructed over time by governments in active and explicit collusion with dominant firms. 

Cartelisation in the pharmaceutical sector today, we therefore submit, involves a permissive and enabling series of entanglements between corporations, states and prominent societal actors. These entanglements have effectively been institutionalised and interlinked with one another as a series of dense regulatory, legal, financial and institutional arrangements for enclosing life sciences innovation into intellectual property (IP) as assets. These relationships and practices are concerned with turning its health value into economic value, and, in the words of Victor Roy’s important new critique, capitalising on cures (Roy 2023). Here, what can be described as the non-market environments and socio-legal infrastructures for pharmaceutical oligopoly are a major basis of durable market power and structural cartelisation. 

Although there are corporate practices and strategies apparent that evidence more recognisable 

forms of cartel-like behaviour (such as price fixing, market rigging and tacit collusion), structural cartelisation both describes and seeks to capture how dominance is facilitated by a combination of market and socio-political, legal and regulatory arrangements which are explicit and institutionalised nationally in HICs, and internationally in the global trade regime of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and over a series of partnerships and initiatives in global health. We therefore use structural collusion here in distinction to traditional understandings of how cartels operate by means of illicit and tacit coordination between firms. The high-level strategic coordination, and the routine bureaucratic and everyday arrangements between firms, states and key societal actors in global health are structurally embedded and rarely need coordination or discussion, involving collective behaviours, practices, shared rhetoric and assumptions (as is the case with the shared language games around the need for patents for innovation), formal and informal linkages, conjoint agency and shared strategic visions of dominance, competition and the basis for state and firm comparative advantages. These agencies act together and intersect to repeatedly produce a whole series of cartel-like outcomes in global political economy. 

Despite the endlessly-argued industry defense that the monopoly-pricing based on patenting creates an economic incentive for innovation, recent research shows there is in fact little relationship between profitability and drug discovery (Işık and Orhangazi 2022, Dosi et al. 2023). What we see instead is that structural cartelisation turns state investments, public goods and the public health value of pharmaceutical innovation into the captured economic value of private corporate profits. We also agree with legal historian Graham Dutfield’s assessment that any explanation of monopoly pricing and associated limitations on access to pharmaceuticals needs to be extended far back and far beyond a narrow focus on present-day patents to take account of the historical development of interdependencies between pharma and governments (Dutfield 2020). That said, we are in new terrain today where the resulting cartel effects are supported by even wider sets of international agency. As Dutfield himself details (2020), the public-private partnerships comprising today’s complex medical-industrial complex are new players in the structurally collusive system. As with other sectors, the pharmaceutical cartel now involves multiple types of strategic partnership in the expansion of monopoly power across global production networks (Sparke et al. 2023). What are described as 'partnerships' and 'foundations' in health and medicines are often part of this broadened agency involved in creating and cementing the collusive regimes of value capture from pharmaceuticals, while supplying it with an often thin semblance of legitimacy to the political economy of medicines which continues to produce such patently inequitable outcomes for would-be consumers and those in need of access (Lexchin 2021, Rushton and Williams 2012).  

In Section 1 we turn to the web-like arrangements of corporate monopoly power and the structures of firm-firm collusion made manifest by COVID. In Section 2 we next examine the networks of firm-state collusion that the pandemic has brought to the fore, including in undermining the proposed waiver from TRIPs rules at the WTO. And in Section 3 we explore the most novel and hybrid kind of collusion represented by the firm-state-philanthropy collusion that became apparent in the philathrocapitalist COVAX initiative. To begin with, though, we offer a short detailing of how our approach to structural cartelisation contributes as an original theorisation of contemporary political-economy.

Robots

'Is the Mobile Phone a Personalized Social Robot?' by Jane Vincent in (2013) 1 Intervalla states 

This paper explores how some people use their mobile phone to manage their emotions and presentation of self to such an extent that they develop a strong bond with it, turning to it first in times of emotional need. It examines how some social robots, designed by experts to provide bespoke emotional support, can address only particular emotional problems. This is further examined by contrasting the electronic emotions managed via the mobile phone with the uses for three social robots: Amazing Ally, KASPAR and Paro. Unlike these robots, that are effective only when responding to certain pre-programmed emotions, the mobile phone appears to be a constant companion dealing with every eventuality. Imbued with the user’s feelings and emotions that surround the continuous and always on presence of the device, the user constantly turns to it for solace, to share joyous moments, recall special memories and more. The resulting close emotional and physical association with a device that is filled with the personal biography of its user is that the mobile phone becomes like a personal social robot; a co-construction of functional machine and intimate emotional experiences known only to the user. 

There is a lot more that we haven’t even begun to understand well enough in ourselves to know how to implement [...] will we ever know how to build a robot like us? (Picard, 2011) 

This paper explores the particular qualities of our emotional relationship with mobile phones and how it compares and contrasts with the parallel development of social (and sociable) robots. Detailed discussion of the methods for creating artificial emotions and building robots is not for this paper rather it is about how humans are making their own personalized social robots by appropriating and manipulating a particular machine in their day to day life to manage their emotions and their self. Social robot is a term that has many definitions with seemingly limitless boundaries from lift sensors responding to a presence to autonomous humanoid machines that perform complex domestic or industrial functions. Picard’s (1997) seminal research on affective computing and her continuing discourse on emotions and robots has highlighted the complexities of understanding and interpreting human actions both in ourselves and in translating these into the design of robotic machines. What happens, however, if the everyday and constant interaction with a computational machine – a mobile phone – enables the user to feel, share, manage and interpret their emotions through using the device? These electronic emotions (Vincent & Fortunati, 2009) remain within the human user but are only created, lived or relived when interacting with the mobile phone. This volte face when human feelings initiate the robotic turn is central to my discussion in this paper; it is not about a machine that has been designed (with emotions) to be a social robot but instead is about a machine that appears to have all the properties of a social robot only when combined with its human user. 

As Picard notes in the introductory quote above despite our endeavors, we still do not really know or understand ourselves nor have we found a way or a technology to make a robot that might independently feel emotions. Although this technological and emotional impasse has thus far prevented humans creating a robot that is one hundred per cent human, social robots have been made that interact with particular facial or physical actions and express programmed emotions; the work of Breazeal (2003) at MIT and Ishiguro (Guizzo 2010) at Osaka University being leading examples. Social robots have also been explored in countless novels and films, often in the guise of an awkwardly jointed metal machine with some form of human transmogrification. The inclusion of emotion in the design of a robot is often heralded as a possible threat to humans for fear that it will create an out of control monster rather than a sympathetic companion (see for example I, Robot by Isaac Asimov). Research on affective computing and sociable robots such as by Picard (1997), Norman (2004), Shaw-Garlock (2009) and Turkle (2011) provides a mass of mostly positive ideas about future social and emotional robots, much of which is about putting the emotion into the robot and creating the affective turn in these otherwise mechanistic devices. 

Having set out my position in this introduction, in the next section of this paper, I outline the theoretical framework for the discussion. I then continue by firstly examining what I consider to be exceptional about a mobile phone, how it might enable this extraordinary role as a kind of social robot for the self and why I believe it is these aspects of the device that set it apart from other information communication technologies (including robotic devices). I illustrate my discussion with examples from my own prior research on mobile phone use (Vincent, 2009; 2011) and from a review of three examples of social robots by way of contrast with the mobile phone: these are machines with human or animal likenesses that are designed to provide emotional support and draw out feelings to enable their human users to express themselves. Contrasting the mobile phone with these social robots I explore how it is being used in similar ways but as a device of self exploration and interaction which, because it has been created or ‘set up’ by the user, is in many ways a reflection of the personal desires and needs of their self.