The Pleasures and Perils of Robotics.

If there is one entity on our planet that never stays the same, it must surely be technology, in all its forms. As it improves upon itself, our fascination with technology only grows. It is perhaps the easiest way for us as imperfect beings to conquer the world, if only through a puppet of our making. Technological enhancements are viewed as blessings from the sky in the eyes of each and every one of us, helping us enormously to get through the harshness of life and come out at the end smelling like roses. It doesn’t matter what invention it was or in what time and context it was unleashed upon the world, technology’s positive social impact has forever remained the same. But we have arrived at a point in time where the possibly hazardous implications of future advancements must be ignored no longer.

Recent proposals by scientific experts in using cyberspace routines of investigative design methods involve taking apart the human brain to emancipate oneself from the body. Historically, there several examples of scholars – most notably Descartes – who contended that, contrary to the widely accepted medical argument that was the complete opposite, the human mind and the human body are two commodities that work and act separately, and that as a result each can be studied in the absence of the other (Ferguson, 2001). A far more recent concept that provides a contemporary angle to the body-and-mind-separate-or-mutually-exclusive debate is artificial intelligence. In the current climate, the concept of the robot permeates our very existence, from people on hospital waiting lists to death row. Many critics assume the point of AI is to provide an answer for the question of what it means to be human. As machines are built by us, however, there is the possibility for the most advanced technologies to interact with us minus the destruction of the mind, and our enhanced ability to live almost anywhere has purified the modern world even more for human inhabitation. Essentially, there is a fine line between smart spaces and smart living spaces (Ferguson 2001).

Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence told the story of a robot boy in the future who fully resembles a real boy minus his being machine inside, learning about existence at the same pace as every human he meets. Interestingly, this perception of a robot child could turn from a possibility to a likelihood within decades thanks to the work of scientists at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology. Sylvain Calinon and his team have patented a sixty-centimetre-tall robot codenamed HOAP-3 which is run on groundbreaking software allowing them to program the robot to perform skills like playing chess just by helping it move its limbs the right way. This is similar to what parents do to educate their children during the early developmental stage of childhood. Calinon’s hope for his team’s breakthrough will enable consumers to teach domesticated robots in the ways of servitude (Barras, 2007).

Relating to this, last year in the United States a state-of-the-art robot was let loose in a class of toddlers for a period of five months (Tanaka et al, 2007). Initially their attitudes to it varied from session to session but in the last week as the robot finally performed its complete behavioural selection it became treated by the children as a peer instead of a toy. This is just one of a rising number of tests and case studies that indicate robot technology is extremely close to attaining all-out love from young human children, which in turn may make it of much use for schoolteachers (Tanaka et al, 2007).

Part of the cyborg theory and our perception of it revolves around their uses for making life easier – but not necessarily for themselves. Artificial intelligence researchers and engineers everywhere are working together today to create robots equipped with standard human agility to give us a helping hand with carrying out daily household chores (Ingebretsen, 2008). This technological proposition calls for all AI techniques, encompassing robotics, knowledge representation, psychology, and developmental learning, to unite for a common aim (Ingebretsen, 2008).

The uses for this robotic human aide potentially stretch further than the home, however. It has already begun in the health care system: Advocate Health Care in Illinois uses robots in two of their hospitals for dispensing pharmaceutical medications, having been programmed to read barcodes associated with literally every medication used in the specific ward (Ceniceros, 2008). These robot pharmacists are faster by a noticeable margin at filling prescriptions than their human counterparts, and much less prone to putting the wrong pill in the wrong bottle, errors like that damaging the reputation of hospital chemists in every country where hospitals can be found (Ceniceros, 2008). Yet, it must be noted that this prospect of a robotic aide in the workforce poses one ominous threat: as this hints at a possible second Industrial Revolution, the same thing that happened to working-class citizens immediately after the first could happen to future generations as a result.

But should this household and workplace robot slave become a reality and then commonplace in mass society, as they grow more highly advanced and subsequently more human, their unconditional loyalty to their owner/maker could be overridden by dangerous feelings of oppression and a lust for revenge, because humans ourselves never appreciate being confined to the life of a slave.

But how big a threat does this pose to our own stability and individual prosperity? Through interaction with communicative robots in our day-to-day lives, our attitudes and emotions with regards to the robots in question have an impact on our behavioural patterns (Nomura et al, 2008). Nomura, Kanda, Suzuki and Kato, drawing on human apprehension, passive-aggressiveness and what those can do for later robot designs and utilizing two self-developed psychological scales for negative reaction to robots (the NARS scale) and reciprocated robot anxiety (the RAS scale), through the results of their study ultimately prove there is indeed evidence within normal human behaviour of a common skepticism about the real power of our technological creations, as well as a connection – whether or not we have the willingness in us to confess it – between technology and to what degree we are in control of our demons and our emotions (Nomura et al, 2008).

As humans, it is the psychological norm for each us of to have a threshold for many negative traits we encounter in others. None of us possess an unlimited amount of patience. Robots, even whilst now they still have yet to be perfected, are conveniently oblivious to the bias we (sporadically) have to them. A recent laboratory test in Japan aimed to find just how quickly robots today respond to their owner’s orders, and to what degree of loyalty (Anonymous, 2008). Thirty-eight students were instructed to order a robot to take out the rubbish, with the cyborg taking between only one and five seconds to make a response. With a two second gap on average being the students’ limit, the robot would speak a word like “well” or “er” to assuage the student’s rapidly diminishing patience. However, when the robot used a small icebreaker to get extra time to form a response, the student did not notice how much time had passed. If the potentially cataclysmic future relations between mankind and robot-kind are to be prevented, we must program robots to have the same communicative levels we enjoy (Anonymous, 2008).

Robots potentially will form a new social minority in future decades. They will begin to outnumber us, and rise up against us if we are not extremely cautious. Fresh reports from the United Kingdom, taking into account new visions of robot status in 2056 by the UK government’s main scientist Sir David King, put forth the possibility that by then robots will be afforded the same basic social rights as every human (Glick, 2007). This will come as no surprise at all to science-fiction fanatics, since Isaac Asimov famously wrote of a future world showing just that: humans and their machine creations sharing the same basic rights everywhere they go. With his policy of the “three laws of robotics,” Asimov presented us with a picture a future utopia where robots and other machines are viewed by the hands that built them as dead objects useful only for scrap metal but should they become essential, they will demand equal rights and will get their way (Glick, 2007).

Borrowing Asimov’s philosophies of robotics in the not-too distant future and transplanting them into overwhelmingly dystopic future landscapes, several highly influential science-fiction film narratives – most notably Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Matrix – have been instrumental as technological cautionary tales with their dark predictions of the possible negative consequences of mankind’s attachment to technology (Kwan 2005). In-depth critiques of science-fiction offer a worthwhile chance for pondering the time-honored notions about the meaning of life and what boundaries there exist in life which none of us can get over. Who knows? Maybe gratitude for and knowledge of the capabilities of robotics and cyberspace could heighten trust between machines and humans, as well as presenting us with clues as what “human being” connotes in a universe dictated for the most part by technology (Kwan 2005).

Looking ahead, what can we do now to prevent Earth from turning into one very, very big rubbish can, to put it metaphorically, because of technology? Each of us needs to think about how much technology we use everyday and as well, the amount of credit we afford it. Nonetheless, or perhaps naturally many technological experts view the possibility of technology eventually causing the death of its creator as just another conspiracy theory dreamed up by science-fiction writers and their followers. Shigeo Horose of the Tokyo Institute of Technology explains, “Robot technology should not be used to interfere with natural human relations and deprive people of their pride and jobs, but should instead be the silent force behind the scenes to support the life of the people.” (Watts, 2008) In the end whoever the future will hold to be successful in their predictions – science-fiction authors/afficionados or their critics – is not the most important issue here at this point. We must work to ensure humans and robots a century from today will be unified in the same causes but able to work independently from each other.

We all have been taught at school about the most tragic mistakes made by humanity all throughout history. This begs the thought, What would psychic abilities on a global scale achieve? Should this, too, become a reality, we then will be granted a perfect opportunity to undo the mistakes of the future even before we make them. Our future is forged everyday by what we do in the present day. All we have to decide is what kind of future we would like, and to create it ourseleves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

· Ferguson, C. L. 2001, Cyborg culture informing architecture: reinserting the human, Dalhousie University, ProQuest.
· Tanaka, F., Cicourel, A and Movellan, J. R. 2007, Socializtion between toddlers and robots at an early childhood educational centre, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Infotrac.
· Barras, C. 2007, The robot that learns like a child, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Ingebretsen, M. 2008, AI helps researchers get a grip on robotic hands, IEEE Intelligent Systems, ProQuest.
· Ceniceros, R. 2008, Robots reduce errors in dispensing prescriptions, Business Insurance, ProQuest.
· Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T. and Kato, K. 2008, Prediction of human behaviour in human-robot interaction using psychological scales and negative attitudes towards robots, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Infotrac.
· Anonymous, 2008, Why robots need the gilt of the gab, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Glick, J. 2007, UK report says robots will have rights. “Always Interesting: AI in the news.” AI Magazine, Infotrac.
· Kwan, W. K. K. 2005, Experiments in subjectivity: a study of postmodern science-fiction, The University of Hong Kong, ProQuest.
· Watts, J. D. 2008, Great minds give a glimpse at possible futures, McClatchy – Tribune Business News, ProQuest.