In class, we were prompted in small groups to discuss what is ethical about introducing robots to society. Immediately our group jumped to discussions of humanity and whether it is ethical for humans to basically enslave these machines in the way that we tend to do. How could we as humans sleep at night if we were forcing these humanoid creatures to do our bidding via their programming? It seemed like a reasonable debate to have, especially as we had just recently discussed the parallels between African American slavery and the robots as “property”. When thinking in this context, then of course it isn’t ethical to introduce robots to society in this manner.
However, in our debate we neglected to differentiate robots from Caves of Steel and the robots that we would realistically be incorporating into today’s society. In Asimov’s novel the robots’ functions are essentially to serve humans, but their presence is realistically over the top. Although the robots can be programmed with qualities that humans may lack, for example unwavering moral compasses, to create these walking, talking, decision making machines to carry out human duties just isn’t feasible or wise for a society like ours. Unemployment is already an issue in our society, so to introduce a machine to do daily jobs like “detective” would be unnecessary and self-destructive.
I think that it’s important to be specific in defining “robot” for the sake of this question, as Asmov’s depiction of them is not the only definition. When it is instead defined as “a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer” (by Google) I can undoubtedly agree that their integration into society isn’t just ethical but necessary. There are many jobs that cannot be carried out effectively due to human error, such as surgical procedures and operating vehicles, so it would be wise to introduce mechanical systems to operate these. Ethical systems don’t even have to be considered, as these robots are merely carrying out preprogrammed tasks that a human would be doing in a less efficient and less effective manner.