There's some point where the robot is realistic enough that it's functionally no different than a nanny. I agree it would be dystopian as hell if the kid was just raised by the robot, but giving the parents a bit more sleep and an opportunity to have a date night once a week would help them be way better parents.

As an extreme case, some parents get so stressed and chronically sleep deprived that they get frustrated at their babies for continually crying and shake them, leading to permanent brain damage and even death.[0] To be clear, these parents don't mean to hurt their child but they're not operating coherently anymore. A robot that can give parents a breather here and there would significantly improve quality of care for soooo many babies.

[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-s...

Baby isn't being raised by a machine. How is this different from a crib mobile (for entertainment) + video monitor?

If it's the same as a crib mobile, then what benefit does it provide?

More effective

The effectiveness comes from exploiting the baby's primal recognition of the mother, which is why it's dystopian. Additionally, by "effective" you mean "the baby spends less time crying," which means that the parents are spending less time with their baby. So parental time is being replaced by an AI. I think it's fair to call that "being raised by AI."

I hope the "Robot nanny optimizes for minimal crytime" argument wasn't written by a parent. What a cold angle.

In theory. And effective at what? And have you considered the side effects of such a device?

Already a thing. The machines are called smartphone/YT/TT/IG, etc