Journal 5
I think sometimes people forget how much robots, in general, play a part in everyday life. As someone who hopes to go into the medical field has gotten a major surgery (ACL) in my lifetime, every time I look at the scar on my knee or participate in shadowing opportunities when I am home, I am reminded on how much robots have revolutionized medicine. Robots have made medicine more specialized, accurate, and less invasive. Robots continue to prove to many medical professionals that they are the best way to ensure the health of their patients and success of their procedures and those medical professionals who have not adapted their uses have largely been left in the dust.
However, when it comes to the development of humanoid robots that will be in charge of making ethical decisions, my stance differs severely. As I expressed on Thursday, I believe that one of the greatest gifts of humanity, the primary way (that we know of right now) as to how we differ from animals, is our ability to grapple with different ethical scenarios, have a firm conception of justice, and have opinions that can be changed through the acquisition of knowledge. I do not believe that there is or will ever be a sort of ideal formula when it comes to ethical situations, for humans are fickle and every decision that we make does not only take into account our conscious thoughts, but also our previously held unconscious judgments. Robots require programming, which means that they would at least have be able to calculate different ethical considerations that humans figured were the best theories to implement. An objective robot is programmed subjectively. Therefore, how can I trust it to make ethical decisions? There is so much more to this world than what formulas can solve. A situation that we continue to consider is the robotic car scenario in which a self-driving car must decide to kill the driver, crash into a minivan full of kids, or kill a motorcyclist. A robot, even with a face recognition system installed that may give it some insight into the past of the people involved has no way to predict the future.
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