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Humans-

This movie I found very intriguing and interesting, but also hard to fathom. Everything that occurred in the movie the idea of the robots teaching themselves to feel and have consciousness- it is something I struggle to wrap my head around. For my journal entry I want to ask a couple questions and go into depth as to why these questions are so striking to me.

1. Is it possible for a computer to teach itself how to feel?

This is a very broad question, but in class we have dived deep into artificial intelligence and it’s possibilities. I find this question so intense and interesting because these movies and articles we are reading are carefully thought into, so I find it confusing if the producers of the movie Humans did enough research to see the extent to technological possibilities that far into the future-or if they are just writing fiction just to write it.

2. Have scientists and technicians and the people that study and invent machines with artificial intelligence- do they predict something like robot humans to exist in the future, and would they be allowed?

The robots in Humans are so real, that it does not seem like something people would ever get to a point to allowing it to be real. But then again, I think about how much humans used to have to do that they now do not because of technology, so why would that not further into something such as a robot servant or something of the sort.

3. Is there a point where humans will stop letting technology replace the daily troubles and work we have in our daily lives?

Just in the same way that computers have replaced millions of jobs as it is, if it continues how will there be any jobs left? Technology, at the rate it’s progressing will eventually be able to replace majority of the jobs that people work at every single day, and if there are no jobs because of robots what will the world turn into? If so few people have jobs left than the world cannot revolve the way it does today. Will the lives of humans completely take a turn and will people stop working? What about currency then? It’s intriguing how far this question could go…

The amazon series “Humans” taps into a long held fear of autonomous robots. Asimov and many other authors have spent their lives writing stories about a futuristic world where robots are able to feel in the same way humans can today. “Humans” attempts to tell a story at a climactic time in the life of robots partnering with humans, the tale of displacement. One of the main storylines in the series is of a stereotypical family, both parents work and are raising 3 kids while trying to stay sane and help their kids succeed. While the mother is gone, the father buys Anita, a robot to help with help around the house. This causes extreme tension between the mother and Anita, in one scene the mother sees that Anita is reading to her youngest daughter she immediately says “Stop reading to her- that’s my job”. The mother is feeling displaced by the female robot coming into the house and, objectively, being able to do more work faster than she ever could have

Another example of displacement is in “Humans” when the parents talk to their oldest daughter, they are discussing her most recent report card, which was extremely lacking. The parents where concered about the lost potential of their daughter, she responds “Why would I spend 7 years in school to become a doctor when a robot can learn how to do it in 15 seconds”. The daughter does not see a place for her in a world full of robots. These fears are not misplaced, displacement was also a major tension in Caves of Steel between the Earthers and robots, many humans were worried the robots would come and steal their jobs.

Currently, we are looking at a future similar to the one described in “Humans”, robots will begin to and have already started to displace humans. This doesn’t have to be a negative, our country just needs to adapt to the changing future.

The show “Humans” encapsulates all of my beliefs about robots since the start of this class. I was shocked to see how parallel the portrayal of Anitta’s displacement of the mother was to be beliefs/fears of AI. At the very beginning of the episode, it was apparent that humans were the superior beings as the father simply said he was “going shopping” and bought Anitta to take care of the house. As she integrated into the household, it seemed as if she began to contest and challenge the mom. This idea parallels my fear, and the fear we have discussed earlier in this class, that as humanoids become integrated into their environment they will begin to adapt the customs and practices of humans.

An example of this is when the mother finds Anitta reading to the daughter and putting her to bed. The mother confronts her and tells her to never read to her daughter again, this is an example of a human trying to retain superiority and prevent displacement by robots. IN response, Anitta assures her that she must value and obey the orders of her owner; referring to Asimov’s law. Although I have these fears of AI displacing humans and replacing them in society, there are moments in the film that ensure that robots are not considered human.

When the peace worker visits Dr Milikan’s house, she comments about how the house was so large for just one person, knowing that he had a robot. Dr. Milikan responded and did not make reference to his robot, “son” being a human. Dr. attempts to humanize his robot by calling him son due to the loss he has endured with the passing of his wife, but the viewer is reassured throughout that the robot does not have merit as a human.

Towards the end of the episode, the husband tells the wife that he did not get the robot to act as the wife, he simply got it to take care of the house; a sign that humans are using robots for their own personal gain. Despite the family’s attempts to dehumanize Anita and robots as a species, I would anticipate the rise of robots and their acceptance as “humans” in future episodes; a fear i have of developments being made in AI in today’s technology world.

This week we read two of Asimov ‘s short stories, and a piece on machine bias. There are similarities between Andrew, the robot from The Bicentennial Man and Multivac, the giant computer from All the Troubles of the World and The Last Question.

In All the Troubles of the World, Multivac is a huge computer used to predict the future, greatly reduce crime, and protects individuals from themselves and each other. Multivac can also answer questions that people ask and print out a response. In this story though, Multivac seemed to have a mind of it’s own, it was able to decide its own course of actions. Multivac ordered a boy to attempt to assassinate Multivac itself. This request showed that it was very possible, with more practice, Multivac would be able to learn deceit. Multivac was acting like a living being and in the end, when asked what it wanted, Multivac said “I want to die”.

This is very similar to Andrew. For Andrew, he started out as a robot, taking care of the Martin family. He starts showing signs of having a mind, feelings, and other human characteristics, like Multivac. Still, Andrew had to obey the three rules of Robotics. This is similar to how Multivac couldn’t stop being a machine. Multivac couldn’t prevent reporting that itself was in increasing danger, and Multivac wasn’t able to hide the instructions it gave to the boy when the Corrections officers requested the record. Both Andrew and Multivac lived lives as robots with a mind that was able to think for itself. In the end, both Andrew and Multivac wanted to die.

A side note is that we also discussed the way Asimov portrays his female characters. Most of the characters in his short stories were men and the women characters were often described as shrill and less than the men.

What I have been finding interesting is our discussion on how in almost all cases that we have seen and read, the robots in some ways have found a way to be like humans. In the short story we read about the computer system, in the end, the system named Multivac was able to feel what humans felt in some way because it constantly received so much information on everyone’s thoughts, the actions they were going to do etc. In the episode of Humans, some of the robots developed feelings and did not follow all 3 rules of robotics. In this sense, the robots all rose above what their original purpose was and in fact were superior over humans. Asimov’s short stories and his interactions of robots with humans makes me believe that if robots ever were to be created, they too would one day realistically rise above man kind and we will no longer have control over their actions. We program a robot to act and do what we want. Therefore, because it is programmed by humans to complete our tasks it is essentially a human and capable of a “growing brain”. In this sense, the robots with human like brains are able to continue to grow past the original programming that we gave them as they are taught to store information, process information and be able to keep up with our brains.

It also was interesting when we discussed the idea of probability especially in terms of the election. Many people predicted Hillary to win over Trump by a great deal. However, what everyone failed to recognize was that while the outcome did not coincide with the prediction, the prediction was not totally wrong in that it had a greater than zero chance of Trump winning. This means that throughout the whole election process, Trump had a chance to win because his probability was non-zero. I realized that many things we interpret in the world are wrong or we are misguided in our conclusions that we draw of probabilities. What we seem to be true is not always true and sometimes as a society we think too absolute rather than thinking realistically. If someone told us there is a 5% chance robots will one day overcome us. Everyone would think that that chance is very small and that it would never happen. However, we must think logically and realistically, that it is a non-zero number, and therefore can very well happen.