A recent article in "PC Magazine" discusses the future of robotics. It talks of how robots could eventually work side by side with humans (picture a robot carrying a windscreen over to a car in a car factory, with a human worker guiding the windscreen into place). Already companies such as Honda and Toyota have built robots that they have employed to carry food and drink across to the tables of employees in their cafeteria. Both companies are quick to point out that their robots would be put to use to work with humans - to enhance life for humans - not necessarily to replace them.
For example robots could be employed in a military aspect, in dangerous situations in order to reduce the loss of human lives.
An interesting concept.
But as is the nature of humans, surely if one country employed robots instead of human soldiers, wouldn't everyone else follow suit? That being the case, would we not ultimately end up with a world war being fought by robots? With human leaders of the world sitting back, smoking cigars and not having to worry about the loss of life or moral implications of the war, it very much proves how pointless war is and in the event of the addition of robotic soldiers, how pointless war would be. Because in all instances, the point of a war is to basically inflict your opinion or control of people (not robots) and is measured by the amount of human destruction and suffering that is caused. The aim is to win by weakening your opponent, usually by destroying the opponent's human military force and bringing down systems that humans rely on. If your battle is being fought by robots for which there is less moral guilt regarding death rates, surely the whole purpose of war is negated?
Moral guilt, lets analyse that a little more. Because the companies building these robots need the robots to be accepted by humans and to work alongside humans, almost imitating them, then you have to make the robots as close to human as you can (without the many psychological issues that are carried around by humans). If you are making them more human and more acceptable to humans, there would almost need to be an emotional respect or bond between human and robot. If such a "respect" is created, ultimately these robots will almost become as loved as a domestic pet. Which will inevitably lead to people becoming emotionally attached to the robot (think the end scenes of the Terminator 2 movie).
That being so, it is possible that sending robots into the forefront of battle could become morally wrong and indeed it may become necessary to produce a bill of rights for robots - Robot Rights. I can envisage this becoming just as ridiculous as Human Rights moral brigade have become now. Where will it all end?
Perhaps the answer is not over develop the idea of robots, just yet? It's an incredible idea, but we are all becoming so caught up in the possibility that we could do this, everyone seems to have lost sight of the fact of whether we actually should.
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