Recently, a colleague from the days when I travelled the country helping companies to improve their performances sent me the link below. This shows how robotics is not just changing how we do things, but how they will also change the way we think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY&sns=em
For those unable to access this video: it shows a walking robot picking up boxes and stacking them onto shelves. At one point during the shot, a human attendant knocks the box out of the hands of the robot and later in the clip, kicks a box away just as the robot is about to lift it up. At another point the attendant pushes the robot flat with a stick but the robot simply gets up from the floor and, without rancour or irritation, gets on with its task.
Although I knew that I was looking at a video of a machine, I found myself feeling sorry for the robot due to its treatment by the attendant. Such feelings may appear silly especially as I never feel sorry for my tractor, computer or angle grinder, and so why do I have a genuine fellow feeling for the robot. How come that I had empathy for the robot but none for say, a food mixer?
As I looked at the video I realised my sense of sorrow was based on a concept of ‘fairness’ in which anything that makes an effort should get something for it. After all, when a human-being tries hard we expect it to get something back in return.
I then asked why should I not feel the same when a robot expends energy to bend down but then has that effort wasted because, on a whim, a human attendant kicks the box away? Could it be because the robot looks more like a human than does an angle grinder? Although modern robots can now answer back, walk on snow and rocks and pour drinks and fetch and carry, they are only machines and so why did I feel that this one was being treated unfairly?
My feelings arose, of course, out of the values inculcated in me as a young child one of which is that, ‘Nothing should be wasted including time and effort,’ and it was this value that was being challenged by the treatment of the robot which, although just a machine, was still using energy which should not be wasted. However, that still doesn’t explain why I felt sympathy for the robot and not a tractor or angle grinder.
The explanation might lie in another value taught as a child which is, “You are no better than anyone else, likewise no-one is better than you.” It may be therefore, that my empathy was aroused when I saw something trying to do a job, but which was being thwarted by someone who believed themselves superior and so able to justify their acting capriciously?
Whilst watching this video, my mind also mused on the way in which throughout history, groups of people have treated other groups badly as compared to their own group. To justify this they often regard others as being of a lesser nature or even sub-human. In the same way as earlier I said that, “the robot was ‘only a machine,” those ancient folks treated others as “only Infidels, only Jews or only Natives.”
How we get on with robots in the future is yet to be worked out but, as they become more responsive, tactile and life-like we could find ourselves developing a whole new set of values and a range of ‘feelings’ to go with them.
Whatever happens however, I am sure my Grandfather was also right when he said that, “In God’s eyes we are all equal.” Although I think he would have agreed that we can draw a line at Robots.
Talking of which, it was the pilot and not the robot who made the following announcement at 35000 feet after the Air NZ plane took off from Auckland,
“Ladies and gentlemen we will now be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of the flight attendants.’
View from the Pew 