Category: Uncategorized

This week we discussed the book The Caves of Steel by Asimov. The booked was placed in the future where there was life on other planets and where robots were widely accepted. On Earth, Asimov predicted a population of 8 billion and a situation where humans lived inside domes and never left the ventilated air and process food. The way Asimov painted Earth is not so different today. The population today is 7.4 billion and growing, and in cities, many buildings and transits are connected, sometimes underground or by enclosed walkways. On Earth, robots weren’t widely accepted.

Personally, I don’t think we are ready for change. For one, humans resist extreme changes. I think these days we love to update every electronic we have, yet if we introduced robots into the daily lives of people, I think there would be a lot of pushback. I think one of the many reasons for pushback would be our right to privacy. We often get worked up when we learn that websites track what we search online, that our emails and phone calls aren’t completely private, or that some streetlights take photos and videos of cars. I think since robots have to take in their surroundings, using them to violate personal privacy would be something the government or other organizations may try to do. Also there are people who could try to reprogram the robots for their individual benefit. This brings in the real problem we have been studying about how to make robots ethical.

The other big topic we talked about was how the women in The Caves of Steel are portrayed. Jessie was the main women character in the story and during our class discussion, we talked about how she was often considered hysterical, weak, bitter, impulsive, and other negative attributes. Jessie was like a robot to society, she had a husband and son and was treated as a robot. Her husband thought of her almost less than him, someone whose only job was to support him and whose hobby was to gossip in the bathroom. The other woman mentioned in the book was Elizabeth, an old maid who was Jessie’s co-worker and a Medievalist. This negative portrayal of women in Asimov’s book is not as surprising as some may find. The book was published in 1954, which was in between the first and second waves of feminism. If the book was published now, I think Asimov would get backlash and more people would criticize its lack of female characters and the way they are shown. We see the negative portrayal (or the empowering portrayal of men) all the time in stories; consider the fairy tales that we read to children. The women are beautiful, helpless, and their goal throughout the story is to find a husband. I know I am generalizing, but most fairy tales depict the men as heroic and the women as purely dependent on the men.

This week we talked a lot about gender and the portrayal of gender in “The Caves of Steel”. Really the only female character in the novel is Jessie and she is portrayed as a very bitter, weak and hysterical woman. She is constantly talked down to by her husband and I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with her throughout the book. I just wanted her to stand up to her husband and say “No. tell me what is going on. “. Elijah is so good as just telling her everything is fine and hanging up the phone before she can say any more. As I talked about this with the people around me in class on Thursday, they brought up a very good point: it is not Jessie’s fault that she is so submissive, it is simply a product of the society that she is in. She does not know any better and you can’t act in someway you have never heard about or seen. She does not realize that she possibly has the option to stand up to her husband, or anyone as a matter of fact, and make the female voice heard in this society.

Going off of that point, for that reason, I do not think that Jessie should be prosecuted for any of her actions in the novel. She did attend meetings and become a member of the medievalist club but she never did anything wrong. It is not like in her spare time she decided to go out and destroy robots or intentionally hurt Daneel. She simply attended meetings where she was able to talk about her point of view and listen to others talk about theirs. Once again she just grew up in this society and she has an opinion and joined a club that shares that same opinion. There is no crime in having an opinion. She very much encompasses New York City as a whole where she herself is acting as a robot. She just goes through the motions of her life and depends on all this processed food and fake air. Theres nothing real or organic about the people of New York or the resources they use, and I feel that Jessie is a great character that encompasses all of this.

This week was very interesting because we continued with our discussion of ethics and applied it to topics that really forced us to think about how our society functions. We began by talking about the ethical situations brought up in The Caves of Steel. I really enjoyed this book because it challenged the idea that robots will eventually turn against mankind and try to destroy humanity. The reasoning behind this common belief is that humans feel threatened by other intelligent beings. Humans are often characterized as a species that needs to be in power and be superior. This could be seen as an internal battle because the human race is also focused on progression. This is evident in history with the Industrial Age and the Space Race.

Another parallel to America’s history is the fact that the robots are treated as slaves. Just like the robots, African Americans had to fight for their freedom to be fully accepted by other humans. We were shown a portrait of Olaudah Equiano, who was a freed slave that supported the British movement to end the slave trade. When put side to side against a portrait of George Washington, you could clearly see the similarities. The clothing, posture, and hairstyle were signs that he was trying to assimilate and be accepted by the white society. This reminded me of when Andrew in The Bicentennial Man, wanted to wear clothes like the humans. This shows a weakness in humans that make it difficult for us to be considered ethical. One of the biggest issues when talking about ethics is the issue of who should have the authority to determine what is right and what is wrong. Another tangent that this led to was the discussion of machine metaethics. I had never heard of this, but the main point is that ethics can be made computable, Innovations to make programs that enable machines to act as ethical advisors to humans. Again, I think this is not probable because there are too many factors to consider when writing the programs. Or, it would just take a very long time and be very meticulous because there are many situations that the robot would have to process. This led us to our ending conversation of whether or not we are ready to introduce robots into human society. I think that we are not ready because we have historically shown that we do not fare well with change. With gender inequality, racism, global warming, and many other pressing issues that we do not have a handle on, I don’t think we could handle another one. The integration of robots would pose a lot of tension and conflict because some people would want to treat them as slaves, while others would argue that they need rights as well because they are intelligent beings. Even though there would be good intentions to begin with, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work out. The results would be very unpredictable. Lastly, I think that having robots would make society more inclined to not work as hard because the robots would do most of the work. It would makes us feel displaces and have no purpose because we are so used to working all the time. We wouldn’t know what to do with all of our free time. The only solution to this problem I think, is time. Over time, we may accept the integration of robots and the role they would play. But, as of now, our world has too many problems to consider another one that would drastically change the way society functions.

I thought our discussion on Thursday was very thought provoking. Most of the class thought we had to many problems in currently in society to start introducing robots into our lives. I agree we are not ready for robots but not for that reason. I don’t agree with that reasoning solely  because I believe robots have the potential to help all of these problems. I heard some people say that with the divide between races right now was one of our main problems. To see how robots can help with that problem we must find the source. If you think back, you’ll remember that the Black Lives Matter movement and similar campaigns really picked up after a case of police brutality in Ferguson, MO. If robots were apart of our police forces, I believe there would be a lot fewer biases when enforcing the law. Robots could record everything thats done and even remind our police officers how they are suppose to act in certain situations and warn officers of when they were violating constitutional rights.

I, however, believe we are not ready for robots because it will create a bigger divide between the wealthy and the poor. Robots will be expensive and will only be affordable to the wealthy. The wealthy could then go and use these robots to aid them in becoming wealthy and give them easier lives. The robots would not be affordable to those who would need them most. I still think robots could help police and help with race issues, but only in certain places. Only wealthy towns/cities would be able to afford robots for their police and in most cases, wealthy towns/cities don’t have as much police intervention going on and thus are not needed there as much. So again, nice towns were the rich live would become nicer, while lower class towns where the poor live would stay the same and maybe even become worse as time goes in.

If as a society we could figure out a way to give the people who need the most aid access to robots, then we will be ready to introduce them into society. And obviously like any other time our society introduces something new, we would need to have the proper legislations in place to regulate robots as well.

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.