Will Robots Live with Human in Harmony?

HKUST 2007-08 Fall Semester _                                                                        HUMA100X Term Paper

Wah Yun Sum, Sam 07104893 [bo_wys]

Will Robots Live with Human in Harmony?

For the past several decades, humans have always been trying very hard to invent robots, all kinds of robots. They can be robotic arms in auto manufacturing, robots that imitate human body or robotic artificial limbs. People believes that the invention of robots can improve quality of life as they take over all the repetitive and socially undesirable jobs that most human are not willing to do. Others say that the reason human tries to create a copy of themselves is because they are lonely. In theory robots can be altered accordingly to our desired shape and character, thus giving us a well tailor-made accompany. A minority says that inventing robots is kind of a proof to demonstrate that we, human, can also do God’s job. So do things will really go as smooth as we have expected with robots? Or in other terms, what had been, or will be the impact of robots on our society. Obviously, science fiction gives us a picture of robots living with human in the future. However, before I start to say anything. Let’s take a look at what I foresee robots are capable of and how ‘clever’ their artificial intelligent (AI) is in the near future. I will then show you some proof that this foresee is based on.

In my world of dreams, robots in the future can be divided into two groups: ones manufactured in large quantity that can do simple programmed work and ones with sophisticated ‘positron’ brain1 that enables them to communicate, or even stimulate human emotions and feelings. Why would I classify them in this way? This idea in fact comes from a real life example: private cars. There are second-hand vehicles that run without air-conditioning. At the same time, there are also sports vehicles worth over a million dollars with similar working principles as the low-priced ones. The ideas are more or less the same. Robots assembled in mass production can be a messenger or used to defuse bomb, their cost is cheap yet productive as they only follow orders. While the sophisticated ones are meant to accompany us, or even replacing the love ones that we have lost. Similarly, this kind of robots can also give hope for couples that cannot give birth. They may worth more than a neat apartment. It does make sense when I predict that the positron brains inside them can make human-like responses that you may not be able to tell whether you are talking to a human being or not. The influence of living with these two kinds of robots is obviously different.

Effect of Robots on Human Society

        In any well-established city like Hong Kong, its prosperity is constantly maintained by the hard work of hundreds of thousands of citizens. But we do have to admit that some of them are having a hard time working with what we call socially undesirable jobs. Examples include collecting garbage or cleaning underground drainage pipes. However it may be even more unpleasant when people are made to work under hazardous or even deal with ‘impossible’ tasks like scaffolding1. So it has always been a fantasy for people to have robots taking over their jobs.