In the book, Caves of Steel, the author Isaac Asimov sets the main characters in a futuristic world where humans and robots live together. On earth the civilizations are largely underground and the citizens have a lot of resentment towards robots for fear they will take their jobs. In space, robots and humans live harmoniously together in the “Spacer World” making each other’s live better. The main character, a detective named Elijah Baley gets put on a murder case with the robot named R. Daneel. Throughout the book we see the similarities R. Daneel and Elijah have, however there is a large distrust of robots simply because they are robots. This distrust leads to hatred, especially within the group The Medievalists who pine for the “olden days” where there were no robots.
This fear of robots is extremely relevant to today’s economy. Detroit was the epicenter for manufacturing cars, however car companies overseas were outcompeting American ones due to automating hteir workforce. This forced car companies in the US to switch to automated workforce, effectively leaving thousands without work. We can also see the fight for minimum wage in the dast food industry is being weakened by the possibility of a machine based service system. Recently, labor unions came together to “Fight for $15” minimum wage in the fast food industry. McDonalds was forced to comply, creating the starting wage ad $15; however within the same week they announced “the nationwide roll-out of touchscreen self-service kiosks”. The machines were the solution to the extremely high work force wages. Due to this our country has very mixed opinions on robots, some view them as the future while others see a future with fewer jobs and more poverty.