Killing a Pleo Robotic Dinosaur Seems like we are going through a human-robot emotional firestorm right now, so here's a little more fuel for the fire.
The interesting question is weather we'll continue to anthropomorphize with robots as we see more of these videos and interact with robots more often in the near future? With repetition, people will eventually internalize, at an emotional level, that robots truly don't have feelings even if it looks like they do. Our brains tend to adapt. If that happens and we lose empathy with live-like robots, will that affect how we empathize with other humans? Will we start to expect that other humans should take our abuse gladly just like robots do?
Have you read Social Intelligence yet? Signs point to no.