A great mind once said that “The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots”. This quote originated from a person whom I greatly admire. It was from a social psychologist and a person who seriously advocates the philosophy of humanism. This man was Eric Fromm. It is indeed true that the connotation of the word “robot” does not necessarily mean the literal sense of it, but as more of a metaphor to a mechanical mindless drone. Nevertheless, it is quite interesting that Fromm’s quote denotes the predicament, the paradox that man will face as he ventures on towards the sophistication of robotics.
In our present culture, we have this fascination with a dystopian society in where mankind is governed by robots and are being dehumanized. In this vision, man is relegated to either as a source of energy to be consumed, or is a nuisance in which must be eradicated. These themes may very well vary from different kinds of scenarios. This dystopian vision can be evidently found in our culture today in the likes of movies, tv shows, novels and videogames. Although I acknowledge the apocalyptic nature and themes of these visions and the message they are trying to convey, I am honestly more interested towards the social and psychological effects of these robots to human society.
What I am more interested in is the probability of the daily social lives and the prospect of interactions between robots and human beings. Well, let us picture this. The year is 3000 and our civilization has technologically advanced immensely. We now have the ability to create advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence. We also have the materials and the processing power to create lifelike robots. From a moralistic point of view, I can clearly picture human beings taking advantage of robots. Traditionally, robots were meant to be a source of labor; but with the high possibility of the development of advanced a.i., I could see this as a potential root for conflicts between man and robots. Another form of abuse that I can envision is the use of robots for sexual gratification and crime. Let us take the movie, Artificial Intelligence as an example. In the movie, the protagonist was introduced to a “sex robot”. This robot supposedly interacted with human beings that gave away sexual gratification. With robots, I can see crime increasing due to human negligence. This topic has so much potential because of the possible repercussions of the acts that man and robots can do which I doubt is going to be pretty.
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