Month: February 2017

After discussing The Caves of Steel in class, I constantly recognized the theme of racism that is both present in the story and has been present in our overall class discussion. This racial attitude is displayed both towards robots and towards women. Jessie is portrayed in the story as a delirious, hysterical figure. She makes irrational decisions and is depicted as somewhat dependent on Elijah. In addition, Elijah treats her as an inferior being, often speaking to her bluntly and disregarding her opinions all together. When she comes into the police office crying hysterically, Jessie is depicted as somewhat unstable and unable to make rational decision. Asimov points out flaws in the society he is currently writing in, where women are treated as inferior and deemed dependent on a male to rise in society. In some societies and even in the United States, this unfair attitude towards women is still prevalent, having influence on wage gaps and employment opportunities. Regarding racism towards robots present in Asimov’s novel, the Medievalists represent many of the hate groups present in society. In Spacetown, robots are treated as second class citizens and used as slave labor. And while Daneel looks almost exactly like Dr. Sarton, he still is used as his servant and follows his order directly in accordance with the Three Laws of Robotics. When Daneel arrives on Earth, he immediately senses and feels disdain from many of the commoners on Earth, causing Jessie to stay with her mother while Daneel and Elijah stay in an apartment. Constantly throughout the story, we see certain groups acting superior to others, whether it be men and women or humans and robots. This theme has characterized many of the readings this semester; Andrew in The Bicentennial Man felt the same resistance towards his quest for equal rights and human hood. While he was more innovate and could create more advance technology, Andrew wasn’t able to become a true member of society until he agreed to die. In my interpretation, granting Andrew citizenship on his 200^th birthday—which is also the day of his death—is merely a way for humans to remain on top of the food chain. Andrew may have been considered the only “human” robot, but now that he has died, the humans can go back to their normal manner of society, using robots for their own personal good and needs. Andrew’s actions may have been a win in the quest for robot citizenship, but a paradigm shift didn’t probably wouldn’t occur in that society to alter the treatment of robots. In the United States, it took years to end slavery, and we still haven’t ended racism in our society. I’m eager to keep reading and find examples of racism in future novels in the course and to witness the literary change in writing as society becomes more progressive.

Honestly, I hate ethics. There is always more than one answer, one never really better than the other. Considering the trolley example, most would say to switch tracks an let the one die instead of the five. Almost everyone would change their mind if the one was someone they loved. In ethics, there is no non-biased answer either. If you chose to kill the one instead of the many, it’s because it’s easier for you to defend and cope with, less blood on your hands as it were. The decision isn’t made using any of the ethical principles we talked about. In situations like that there isn’t enough time.

This is were the debate for robots comes in. If we were able to create artificial intelligence that doesn’t mean we have created the solution for ethical and moral dilemma’s. There are too many theories to sift through in order to make a decision and we don’t know which method, if any, is the best.

Another thing is that we are not ready for artificial intelligence that takes a humanoid form. We have enough trouble dealing with the differences in our our species, do we really think we can handle the complications that a new being creates. Right off the bat people would be fighting over the subservient behavior some would want rather than give them rights. We will never create a robot with a human like capacity. There is no way to program grief, happiness or sadness only responses that may resemble such emotions and reactions. The human race would not be able to cope with another fairly sentient life form that could preform task and out live us without major fighting first.

This week discussed deeper understandings of Asimov’s “The Caves of Steel”. We dug deeper into the understanding of how some societies interpret the use of robots and their role in society.

“The Caves of Steel” was very interesting in the way it approached the space age. The way that AI were involved in society was very “inventive”. The Outer Worlds was not something that I really was expecting to hold such importance. The story was definitely interesting but the world and backdrop was more interesting to me due to the implications of how the world progressed and expanded. The juxtaposition of femininity and masculinity we discussed in class was very obvious after it was brought up on Tuesday. So when I read the remainder of the book there was a very obvious connection between those themes. Especially due to the lack of females in the outer worlds, even when those areas are more “feminine”.

The discussion in class on Thursday was also very interesting, we worked into the ideas of progression and how our world has progressed and will continue to progress. My group focused alot on the rise of late stage capitalism and the continuing change in the economy. We discussed the next stage of the world stage in the form of centralized government and economics. It was a very interesting discussion that tied really well with our discussion of ethics.

While discussing whether our society is ready for the introduction of robots or not, it was very interesting to note the different view points people brought in class. When asked the question, I could not help but think that in some sort of way people seem ready for it because of our “obsession” with advancement in technologies. We always are wanting more of the new thing to out compete other economies, thus if the introduction of robots is the new thing in the market I think people wouldn’t necessarily be scared but curious about it. But in the other hand, it is true what we discussed in class. Our society has so many issues that introducing this new race wouldn’t be beneficial. If we do have robots, how do we classify them? Do we give them gender? Are the equal or inferior to humans? Do we allow them to integrate in our society? Do we make it accessible to everyone? These are some of the questions that I think the answers will be hard to find until our society solve these same issues that exists among humans. It will be particularly hard coming up with laws and rules that would no longer address the rights of humans and how they should behave, but would have to now relate to robots as well.  Isaac Asimov show us what a world with robots could look like and, likewise the human-robot interaction that exists in this universe, I feel like that would be the same thing we observe in earth with the first introduction of robots. People feel safe in their comfort zone thus the application of robots would do nothing but disturb this. I agree with what we said in class; with the advancements in technology, the introduction of robots ultimately will happen but people will just need time in order to get used to this change.

This Thursday, we discussed the role femininity played in The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. There are very few female characters in the book overall, but the author has made a point to emphasize stereotypes that are still pervasive till this day. For example, females are categorized as hysterical and weak.

Jessie, Elijah’s wife, is the most substantial female presence throughout the story. She is introduced as a submissive housewife who quit her job right after getting pregnant. Often Elijah even disregards Jessie by abruptly hanging up on her whenever they spoke on the phone. This kind of disrespect was something that almost never occurred between men.

Elijah’s bias towards women almost cost him the whole case. Jessie was hesitant to reveal how she discovered that Daneel was a robot. Finally, she provided a lame excuse about it being a topic of conversation in the female Personal. Elijah easily accepted this and proved to the audience that his bias toward women was so deeply ingrained that he did not think to question her honesty. In his mind, he probably that women were only good for spreading rumors. But Jessie acquired the information from an underground anti-robot group she was affiliated with and not from gossiping. If it was not for Jessie’s lie, Elijah would have cracked the case earlier on in the story.

When femininity is imposed onto a male character it is used to convey weakness or stupidity. When Elijah was expressing his idea that Daneel was Dr. Sarton he was referred to as hysterical. Hysteria is something usually only attributed to females and to refer to Elijah that way was a method of revealing his weaknesses.

At times, it seems that Asimov is playing with our own gender biases to make us feel a certain way. The argument can also be made that he is playing into his own biases. The rise of Feminism come after this period and it is possible that he was simply responding to what was already bubbling in society.