Author: Grant Accurso

French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, developed four fundamental types of discourses. He created four discourses which he named, Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst and believed they all relate to one another. According to Lacan, a discourse refers to a point where speech and language intersect. The four discourses portray the four possible combinations of a network which social bonds could take. These bonds can be represented by four different positions:the agent, the other, the product, and the truth. One discourse he developed was titled Discourse of the Master. This concept analyzed the struggle for mastery, domination, and penetration dealing with a master and his slaves. In this discourse, the master is expressed as S1, the master signifier. The master confronts the slave which is expressed as S2. The slave is what the discourse is addressed to. In the lower right stands desire. Desire is what the discourse has created. Masters desire obedience, duty, and sexual obedience from their slaves. Finally, the product of the discourse is placed in the lower left. The product is what the discourse attempted to express. In this case, the discourse was meant to express a gathering of money. The slaves work for the master. Whatever products the slaves make are sold on the market. The master gains profit from products sold on the market.

In the novel, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delaney, Rat Korga is a 19 year -old member Rhyonon’s criminal underclass. As the story progresses, it becomes evident that Korga’s sexuality has brought about his miserable life on the planet. On Rhyonon, small physical size is  considered a prerequisite for physical beauty. Sexual relations between people of different sizes on the planet is considered taboo. Rat Korga, who is seven feet tall, is attracted to small men. His attraction of different sizes rather than his sexuality is the issue. Korga goes on to volunteer for RAT which stands for Radical Anxiety Termination. This process involves destroying a number of brain cells in order to remove the part of his personality which includes his volume for creativity and initiative. After Korga undergoes the therapy, he feels content with himself. He is then forced to live a horrible life as being a slave for different institutions. Eventually, the planet of Rhyonon is destroyed due to a large fire across worlds causes by aliens known as the XLV. Rat Korga is the sole survivor of this conflagration on Rhyonon and soon becomes a celebrity.

The reading for this week titled, The Rise of the Robots, by Martin Ford, discussed the expansion of robotics across the globe in all aspects of industrialization. Ford begins the chapter by describing a scenario of a human worker and a machine moving boxes. The human worker understands that one must remove boxes from the top first so the pile doesn’t collapse. On the other hand, the machine takes time to perceive the situation then moves the boxes. Ford states that overtime as machines become more advanced, they will be able to move a box a second while a human moves a box every six seconds. “Robots can work continuously, will never get tired or suffer back injury, and will never file worker’s compensation claims.” The article goes on to give examples of robots taking over all tasks at work. For example, at the Tesla production headquarters in Fremont, California, the same robot is able to install seats, retool itself, apply adhesive, and then drop the windshield in place. The International Federation of Robotics stated that global shipments of industrial robots increased by more than 60 percent between 2000-2012. However, the fastest growing market of robotics is in China. Robot installations grew at about 25 percent per year. Ford goes on to explain that we are currently in an, ‘explosive wave of innovation,’ meaning that humans will eventually manufacture robots that can complete tasks in any commercial, industrial and consumer area. Scientists at Stanford University developed a Robot Operating System (ROS) that is used as the platform for robotics development. This software can be modified in any which way allowing it to be applied to any robotic body. In terms of the U.S. manufacturing industry, robots have been eliminating  various jobs of human workers. As these robots become more capable of completing tasks, factories will approach becoming fully automation. Martin Ford concludes his passage by stating that as robotics are used across the country, they will threaten lower wage jobs that require modest training. Some assume the U.S. will be able to absorb all these free workers and create high-skilled, higher-wage jobs for them. Ford believes this may be false in the end.

The reading covered this week, Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and Machine Metaethics, written by Susan Leigh-Anderson discusses the possibility of using robots as ethical advisors for humans. Asimov rejected his own three laws dealing with robotics because he believed a robot like Andrew Martin, shouldn’t be treated as a slave for human beings. Susan writes, “Humans treat machines like slaves and this makes it difficult for them to be ethical paragons.” By understanding this form of weakness in humans, it is beneficial for machines to instruct humans as to how to become more ethical. In the novel, The Bicentennial Man, Andrew Martin is bullied by a group of kids because they are simply afraid of a smarter being who can live longer than humans. By analyzing this scene, it becomes clear that the story is meant to remind us of the slavery of African Americans in the United States. African Americans acted as slaves and were bullied by whites in cruel forms. Anderson notes, “Humans act irrational when their interests are threatened and they have to deal with a being different from themselves.” The concept of machine metaethics then comes into play. The ultimate goal associated with this concept is to create a machine that follows an ideal ethical principle, and is guided by that principle in the decisions it makes. The article points out different characteristics which robots would need to build upon a principle of moral standing. Some of the characteristics include the obtainment of the faculty of reason, the capacity to communicate, and act of being self-conscious. Towards the end of the article, Susan Leigh-Anderson writes that Asimov’s three laws governing robots aren’t satisfactory. Robots should be created as ethical advisors to humans, not just autonomous machines.

In class Tuesday, we discussed the meaning of morality and the values associated with the meaning. Professor Perrone began the class by asking what society was. From my own perspective, I though of a society as a group of people interacting for a common good. As a class, we were able to agree on the fact that society differs with each nation. For example, the social norms in Brazil are totally different from the social norms in the United States. What citizens of each nation wear to the beach is a prime example of this. Although social norms are distinct in each country, people share a list of common core of values. Some of these values include; not killing others, not depriving freedom, and being honest. Many of the common core values people believe in constitute as laws. However, something may be lawful but immoral. An example of this would be the Jim Crow laws passed in the 1880s. Although blacks and whites are equal as humans, this law legalized the segregation between the two ethnicities because of skin color. The Jim Crow laws are what we refer to as a moral dilemma. Later on in class, we established the difference between morals and ethics. Morals are defined as rules that allow us to get along. Ethics are simply a means to which we solve a moral dilemma. In the case of the Jim Crow laws, the case which ended the moral dilemma was Brown vs. Board of Education. The case involved a young black woman being enrolled into a predominantly white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. From this case, the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. This hearing proved to be the ethical solution to the problem. A theory which we discussed as a class towards the end of the period was Rawl’s Theory of Justice. This theory is composed of two points. The first one states that one’s claims for “adequate” rights and benefits must be consistent with the claims of others. The second point explains that inequalities are only fair if everyone has equal opportunities for growth and if the inequalities benefit the least advantaged. During the Jim Crow laws, it is clear that this theory wasn’t in effect within United States. However, with the aid of individuals leading the civil rights movement, Rawl’s Theory of Justice quickly came into play in the United States.