Hey folks,
Machines are used throughout the world to help/assist us in doing our chores. And, more and more machines are being designed and put into use these days, which is why I have always wondered about a futuristic society where we would have robots and automated machines doing all labour and other sort of simple/repetitive jobs. It would be awesome if we could have robot servants/employees who would do all our work for us at our direction. However, there are several other implications to having these bots which makes me wonder, how realistic can it be to actually have them?
Allow me to explain; the designing of such bots is going to be very hard itself plus to make them deal with exceptional cases in their tasks will be a nightmare for the engineers. Then we would have to deal with possible malfunctioning, maintenance and other forms of sustaining exercises. Plus the financial costs of doing all this. Perhaps even if all the hardware designing and keeping can be managed, there are effects that such robots will have on society which need to be considered. Betterment in technology and equipment means more jobs done by machines which inevitably lead to lesser jobs and more unemployment. It just might be possible that even with all their help these bots would be cursed in the real world for putting people out of work. Another possible scenario is that if too much dependence is put on these robots, people may become disoriented with world itself (for a better image- scenario in the space station in the movie Wall-E portrays this). So then, when and how can robots come into the society? One ideal time to introduce bots could be when the society is in sort of a Marxist structure where everyone looks for the betterment of each other over competition, when imaginably all governments of the countries throughout the world have given up their greed and only look to make the world a better place. Also, a balance needs to be maintained between dependence on these robots and doing it ourself. Only maybe then, the robots can be of genuine assistance to humans and not replacement of humans.
Feel free to drop in comments below!
PS: Here are a two detailed readings if you are interested-
1. http://www.links999.net/robotics/robots/robots_ethical.html
2. http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/ethical-issues-robots-society
As always you could look for more if you want ;)
I don't believe in sci-fi fictions and their dipiction of Robots. Robots will only be machines and programs created by human, it should never have the ability to do what humans are capable of, but only as assistants.
ReplyDeleteAnd we should never rely on Robots to replace daily human activities such as taking a shower ,playing sports or walking to places, because then mankind will de-evolutionize themselves...
I never said that the robots will have the capability to do what humans do.. my point was that for example factories get newer automated machines to do some of their repetitive jobs which in turn leads to less requirement for labor in factories(hence, technically replacing the humans at their jobs). You could argue that this is assistance as it reduces the amount of work done by humans but it also reduces the amount of jobs. Now imagine we use robots for all simple/repetitive jobs, would it provide us assistance or replacement of ourselves ?
ReplyDelete