When I demonstrate robots
the most frequent question I am asked is: “What does it do?”
My – admittedly, my
somewhat flippant answer is: “What would you like it to do?”
The time has come to recognize
that the advance of humanoid robots while presently still only at a nascent
stage, has already achieved amazingly great things. Clearly though, people are trying
to understand and grapple with the very idea of robots as a reality. Not just
where do they fit in society? But where will they fit in my life? How will I end
up interacting with them? Will I be forced to interact with them? Are they nice
to be around? What role will they play in my life? Will they take my job? What does it mean to own
and use one?
Most of the questions I get quickly arrive at the same personal
level that I remember surrounded the reactions and responses to the advent of
personal computers. But this go around with robots as the next new interface to
knowledge, information and services has a different edge to it.
It seems that with robots
we tend to want to test and probe more about the humanized traits they display.
We didn’t do this so much with personal computers. They were quickly seen as friendly
and as an ally and in the end a machine. And, they were deemed controllable.
Robots stir up a different reaction. Does it think by itself? Does it feel the
emotion it senses? Can it run off and do its own thing? Does it know what I am
thinking? I was once even asked if one felt sad being left alone?
The reasons these
reactions are different from the initial personal computer experience is driven
by the fact that robots are intentionally designed to evoke a human-like
quality. And yes, they can become engaging, empathetic and endearing. But
perhaps most unsettling to some, is that robots have mobility and a certain
display of autonomy. They can move about and navigate their surroundings. They turn
their heads and look at you when you speak, and move their arms and hands and
fingers. Some individuals I have met feel that maybe this ‘thing’ can and might
‘chase them down’. “Can I hide from it?” they ask. At the core of most of this
cultural and social formulation attitudes about robots is the sense of the
foreboding by many that surrounds robots in that they will be replacing people
in many roles and jobs.
A lot of this emotive
reaction has already given rise in Europe with the Economic Union (EU) developing
‘civil law rules for robotics’. This is of course in anticipation of the impact
of and the quantity of robots we will encounter in our future society. While in
and of itself a good idea to think about and consider such policies, it tends
to contribute to the general uneasiness about robots in that they seemingly
have already achieved a ‘lobbying status’ in governmental bodies.
In debates and discussions about these
issues I inevitably return to my actual experience. When you see a child suffer
less pain and stress when facing medical procedures because they are accompanied
by a medical assistant robot that they trust; when you see seniors becoming
actively engaged via a tele-presence robot reducing the life-threatening impact
of loneliness and isolation; when you see young students in a classroom
becoming excited and engaged with learning new math and science concepts and
skills; when you see the elderly in a skilled nursing facility become animated
over attending an exercise session led by a robot; when you see a robot
contribute to enhanced care decisions and performance results in a hospital
labor ward; when you see an autistic child achieve lasting social improvement
progress you begin to sense the true cultural and social impact of robots…and
it is good.
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