Month: February 2017

This weeks class we had a really interesting discussion on robotics and whether or not our we are ready as a nation and the world to have robots. In my opinion, we will never be ready for robotics because we there is a line that has to be drawn that we cannot cross. Not forever, but until we as a society can correct our own problems, how can we bring in what almost is a whole new “race”. I do not think we can control where robots go and the exact impact they will have. For example, the invention of telephones was created to allow people from far distances to communicate with one another. However, from that stemmed cellphones which my generation revolves our lives around. So much so, that our communication skills face to face with humans has declined. If one day, all cellphones and telephones were destroyed, our generation most likely could not survive. We do not have the skills to communicate with people we rely on, and our whole world system is created off of the telephone. If robots were created, they would be able to do our tasks and jobs for us. Our entire society could change and now be based off of robots. What if one day, all of the robots were destroyed. All the generations who no longer had robots to do work for them would not be able to complete every day tasks. Our society would be sent back decades. People would have to re-learn how to do tasks and have to perform work on their own. This is why I do not believe that robots should be created.

After the question about whether we, as a species, are ready for robots that look like us to enter society was brought up I started thinking about the implications outside of job loss, ethics and how we would react. I came up with the idea that if robots are so far ahead of us, they cannot get injured, sick, and have many other advantages over us, how long until we start trying to be more robot than human. I do not know how everyone else feels, but I wish I did not have to get a cold two to three times a year and being part robot would end that. Being a cyborg would make us all olympic-level athletes, we could probably have night vision inserted into our eyes, we would never need any food, or drinks to stay alive and we could all potentially live forever. It sounds almost too good to be true until we consider that we would be throwing away our humanity and thus would be no better than a smartphone. Furthermore, at what point of human-robot combination causes the human to lose its humanity? A leg, a finger, an organ…? What part of us makes us human? And if the only human that is left is a brain, do we still count as living?

During this week of class, we had discussed themes of slavery, parallels between human and robot and briefly discussed metaethics. What was most interesting about the topics of slavery were the ways in which slaves had originally try to be on par with their richer, whiter masters. They had either dressed and looked like them, begged for their freedom, or were ready to take to violence for it. A lot of these ways in which former slaves desired freedom and to be equal to white people are similar to the way Andrew fights for his freedom in The Bicentennial Man. Asimov has themes in both The Bicentennial Man and The Caves of Steel that are very similar to themes of slavery and judging others based on appearance. One interesting aspect contrast between both stories to me was that both Andrew Martin and Elijah feel some sort of fear from the other coexisting form of life; Elijah fears he will lose his job to Daneel, a robot, and Andrew fears he will never be on par with humans.

Another interesting aspect of this week’s classes was the Metaethics article, more specifically the idea of speciesism. Over the past few hundred years, humans have come a long in way in learning to be more socially accepting towards others. For example, people began to see the error in their ways when discriminating against others simply based on their race, gender, and now currently, their sexual orientation. We are in an era where we are judging each other more on each other’s character and morals than we are any sort of physical characteristic, although outdated ideologies tend to surface here and there. But perhaps the new “social barrier” to break is to start thinking about how we deem sentient life, and do we allow it rights simply based on respect of consciousness, or do we base it on how similar to humans that form of life would be? The discussion on Thursday of the argument of whether or not we should allow robots into society now was very intriguing. The knee-jerk reaction is probably no, as our greatest sci-fi fears of robot revolution or creepily identical human A.I. seeps into our minds at the thought. However, if we compare our ways of thinking now to just a few years ago, the people of 1817 would be completely estranged. We are more tolerant than ever of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.;most of us base our judgement on character of another fellow human in our species. In the next few hundred years, perhaps we will have to extend those means of acceptance to behavior that isn’t simply just “human” or like us. We may have to be open to even stranger ways of thinking that will give the respect that conscious life may deserve. So, as for now, most of us are probably hesitant to accept androids/robots into society. As we grow more and more comfortable with the pace of technology however, we may be ready to address the subject of what constitutes life outside of speciesism and human boundaries, which could be in the very distant future.

Of all of the discussions we had this week, the one I found to be the most compelling was the discussion of whether or not we in our current state are ready for the introduction of robots into our society. Upon first reflection, I considered the introduction of robots into our society to be at the level of the beings which inhabit Asimov’s worlds, having intelligence to the point that they are able to complete complex tasks and reason on their own as opposed to the robots of today, which perform basic tasks, and only those tasks with which they were initially programmed, meaning that they do not possess the ability to learn.

In terms of the complex robots of Asimov’s world, I think we are far from ready to have them as a part of our world, however I think it very likely that we will get such technology before we are ready and be forced to adjust. One reason that I argue that we are not ready is due to the fact that we currently have too many problems amongst humans alone to be able to reasonably factor in a completely new being. For example, in terms of gender, we are currently in the midst of a heated debate over whether or not there are only two genders, and who is able to identify as what. If we were it add robots to our society, there would be an additional debate of whether or not they should have genders, and if so, what genders they should be, whether they be incorporated into our current social norms of having a binary gender system, or whether they should have their own unique gender. Beyond the argument of gender, there is also the question of rights. Currently not every person has protected and equal rights to everyone else, and if robots were to be added to the mix, particularly if they were able to pass the Turing test and feasibly assimilate to the current society, there would be the problem of whether or not they would have their own rights separating them from humans, or whether they would experience the same rights as the majority of the population, in which case some robots might gain more rights than some humans.

If thinking of the introduction of robots into our society in terms of something more immediately feasible, such as self-driving cars, a whole other slew of problems arises. For example, not everyone would have access to the same level of car, and while the car’s basic form may be programmed to simply limit the overall number of deaths if forced into such a situation, some more affluent people would be able to purchase modifications of upgrades which could prevent their deaths at all costs, or be biased based on other factors such as race or gender. What’s more, such technology could easily be hijacked to serve an ulterior motive, or hacked and used for a destructive purpose. All in all, although there are countless more reasons why we are not ready for such advanced technology and the introduction of robots into our society.

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.