Technology and Us #1: Robots, machinery or romance?

Whenever we think about robots we always think about all the things they could help us with, like housework, factory work or maybe replace some jobs. However, when some people see robots that were given cute faces work, they go ’aaaww’.

Now, our grandparents would never go aaaaw, they would be freaked out about how come is the machine moving like we do. They would never even dare to trust that big pile of metal for a second. And here we are so accustomed to trust technology, because it helps us to get around and get closer, doesn’t disappoint so we don’t even question it’s intentions.

So when we are presented with the notion of robots everywhere, we trust in their better judgement. Heck, we might even think that if we love them, they can fall in love with us back.

Our compassion gets in the way of reason.

Today’s romanticism that we see everywhere is making us want them to be like us, and forget that they do not have any free will. The movie Ex machina really tapped into this fear of how can robots fool us. Even though, it’s not the robots, it’s the people behind them. At least for now. Until Artificial Intelligence will get out of the reach of our control, but more on that, in the next post.

For now, let’s just remember that robots are machines, and have no free will or no compassion and definitely have no love for us.