Life in the Fast Lane

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In Japan, they work as carers and look eerily lifelike … but what would happen if the robots turned against us?

Japanese robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro (right) unveiled Germinoid (left), a robot replica of himself.

No invention in the past century has better evoked the uneasy relationship we have with technology — a mixture of awe, huge (and usually unfulfilled) expectations and some fear.

A report commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry talked about giving robots “human” rights – including the right to vote, to receive income support, the provision of council housing and even robot healthcare.

Instead, we should worry just where the technology of robotics is leading us humans, because in the future the dark side of machine intelligence will make itself felt with increasing force.

So why should we be worried by a technology that seems to have so far brought us little more than some clever toys and machines that can weld cars, vacuum, and clean pools?

Robots, like so many modern inventions, began life in science fiction novels. But it was Capek who not only coined the word (from the Czech verb “to work”) but defined what most of us think when we envision a robot.

Most people believe a robot has to look like a human, but this is not the case.

All it needs to be is artificial, capable of “intelligent” behavior, preferably able to move and most importantly, be capable of being re-programmed to carry out a wide variety of tasks with a degree of autonomy.

The idea that robots may also possess a sense of self-awareness has been a mainstay of science fiction since the days of Capek.

However, in real life no one has yet made a sentient machine. We have no idea how phenomena such as consciousness, morality, love or anger are generated in human brains — and far less an idea of how to impart these things into computer software and silicon chips. Hence the skepticism about “robot rights“.

Many experts question the whole idea of building a humanoid robot at all.

There will always be a demand for human-like robots — even if they are no more than curiosities.

Hiroshi Ishiguro, a robotics professor at Osaka University in Japan, has built some remarkably lifelike robots with latex skin, which can replicate human facial gestures with impressive authenticity.

More and more aspects of our society are being “roboticised“.

This means an explosive growth of robot-like artificially-intelligent autonomous systems — such as those which answer call centre phones or fly our planes.

Most of these are hugely useful. But more worryingly, there is the possibility that some of these “dumb” robots may be harmful.

In Japan, which is facing a demographic time-bomb as fewer babies are being born and more people are living into their advanced age, the authorities are looking to use robots to look after old people.

A prototype called “Nursebot” toddled around old people’s homes, checking patients had taken their medication, reminding them to do so if they had not and contacting their (human) doctors if any vital signs were amiss.

The danger with such developments is that we will be tempted on grounds of cost to consign the care of some of society’s most vulnerable members to machines.

At best, this could be terribly dehumanizing for the old folk, at worst, something could go wrong with the programming.

But it’s in the military sphere that robots can make the greatest impact. In the U.S., the Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on research projects with the aim of producing a new race of autonomous fighting machines.

The aim is to replace a third of America’s fighting vehicles with the machines in the next 20 years.

What we will see are robotic planes carrying out reconnaissance, robotic troop carriers and tankers traveling across the desert and robotic submarines patrolling the Gulf, and inevitably, fighting machines.

The question is then, who gives the orders to shoot? Is it is a soldier in a command post miles away? Or is the aim to program these machines to make their own decisions? Then we are into a whole new ball game.

“They don’t get hungry,” Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon told the New York Times recently. “They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”

But unfortunately, as we have seen in recent conflicts, even well trained soldiers can make tragic errors in the heat of battle.

Germinoid, a Breathing Android
Germinoid appears humanlike in its movements — it can blink and even breathe using compressed air. Its sensors allow it to be touched with humanlike reaction. It has realistic skin made of flexible latex silicone.

Germinoid’s creator uses it as a communication tool and can speak through him from outside the room. He envisions the day when humans would sit side by side androids at the table or board room.

One person attending a conference for a display of similar robots stated that the telling difference is that you don’t detect any emotion.

Androids such as this could cloud the debate for “robots rights”.

A scary thought is that even I keep catching myself calling it “him” when referring to it.

Related Stories:
Robots to Have Human Rights NOT Merely Fiction

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