Robots and Fear [research ongoing]

      ROBOTS and US (part 1)

      

 

 

      Robots. When you think of a robot, you generally think of some mechanical creation of man that is somehow tasked to do something that will enhance our daily lives or make a job more efficient. No matter what the robot might be tasked to do, it is undoubtedly something that we (humans) have given it to do. This is a main distinction and must be maintained in order for a robot to be considered, "a robot". Without that - without the robot being given something to do, a task by a human, it is then doing something on its own. It is then taking it upon itself, taking it upon its own "will" to do a task. Once this has occurred it must be concluded that the robot is now, "self aware". 

If "self aware', then the robot is no longer controlled by human or anything other than its own "will". So if asked, can a robot have it's own will? The answer is sure. It most definitely can. We must in turn ask, how did it get to the point that it has its own will? And why is it considered to have its own will? Does it fit the criteria above? Is it taking it upon itself to not do what a human has instructed it, but rather what it wants to do itself? This is what shall determine a robot being "self aware". 

A lot of people worry that if robots are put into too many places within our society that it will then be a problem that we can no longer correct. People also believe that it is the tasks that we entrust to these mechanical creations that makes them a possible danger, not necessarily where they are placed. I think it is a combination of both in varying degrees. You can put a variety of robots in a high security area, but if they are tasked with nothing more than cleaning the carpet, is there truly anything to worry about? On the other hand, should the robots be capable of say, monitoring Internet traffic or the emails that come into certain accounts and instead of many robots there are only two, is the degree of security risk higher? Of course it is, that would seem to be an obvious scenario to use. However, it is appropriate because should you ask both of these questions to 100 people on a public street or public shopping center as most polling is, you would most likely be surprised by how many people fear the robot vacuums simply because of sheer numbers. 

So what does this show? Well, it does not show too much because of the lack of details. The one thing that it does show in my opinion is that many people have a innate fear of things they do not understand and it really does not matter what they are. But if you put into a scenario things that people do not fully comprehend and increase the number of these "things" to something high enough to translate into what could be considered a high concentration, you will have created a sufficient amount of fear, however unwarranted.