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Sony puts robotic dog, Aibo, to "sleep".

By Sony cutting off the Aibo pet robot, many loyal fans and customers of the virtual pet discredit Sony from being the technical innovator it used to be.

The stakeholders mentioned in this article include businesses and their employees. The social and ethical issue is people and machines. The area of impact is business and employment. In this article the IT system is never specifically referred to but the author make several references to "technological advances" that involve artificial intelligence enabled software. The issue raised in this article is the issue of technological advancements relating to artificial intelligence becoming a threat to people's jobs. In the article the examples of manufacturing and low skill labor but more significantly A.I.'s threat to white collar jobs. With the invention of software that can sift through documents at speeds that humans could never challenge, lawyers and their document analysis skills are less in demand. Radiologists are quickly losing their jobs to machines that can analyze medical scans faster. This new danger to not only blue collar jobs but also white collar jobs is alarming to the public. The article provides a one sided point of view that rejects the issue of machines taking jobs from people. The author argues that machines do us the favor of taking over boring jobs that no one wants. What the author fails to recognize is the fact that a lot of these jobs (especially the low skill ones) are want working class citizens depend on to pay their bills and feed their families. If machines are taking jobs that require none or very little education they are threatening the livelihoods of a large part of the population of this country. This issue could pose a big threat to the survival of the lower and middle classes.