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.