Humans and Robots: Understanding Our Connection

With a big surge of interest in artificial intelligence and robotics in  the past few years, the press is eagerly speculating about our future with  robots, with headlines like “Will Robots Steal Your Job?,” “The Robots Are Coming, Prepare for Trouble,” and “Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us?” In 2013, a widely promoted University of Oxford study predicted that almost half of all employment in the United States was at high risk of being replaced by robots and AI within ten to twenty  years, and others have predicted even greater vulnerability. Technology is advancing at a breathtaking pace, they say. And robots, the story goes, will soon be able to do everything that humans do, while never tiring, never complaining, and working twenty-four hours a day. A 2017 Pew Research study showed that 77 percent of Americans think that during  their lifetime, robots and AI will be able to do many of the jobs currently done by humans. According to Pew surveyor Aaron Smith, most  people “are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities.”

Not only are we on the cusp of the robot job takeover, say the headlines; some believe the robots will take over more than our jobs. Artificial intelligence, they claim, is on the threshold of outsmarting us. Respected thinkers have raised concerns about artificial superintelligence, predicting that robots could outpace human intelligence and wreak havoc on the world. From Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, these high-profile individuals have sounded the alarm on what they view as the greatest threat to humanity, fanning the flames of latent fears. It’s easy for people to get on board with the robot takeover narrative, at least in the West. After all, most of our mainstream science-fictional portrayal of robots has been around precisely this topic, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ex Machina.

New technologies often inspire concern, but perhaps not quite in the same way as robots. According to tech philosophy and ethics scholars Peter Asaro and Wendell Wallach, our robot narratives throughout  history are about good robots turning evil, either turning against their genius creators, like Frankenstein’s monster, or turning against human civilization at large. Is this because robots inherently pose this threat? It’s worth noting that this fear seems culturally specific. Karel Čapek’s famous...

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