<\/p>\n
These are just a few of the headlines I’ve seen in the last week, and there are new ones in my news feed every day. So today, I’d like to reflect on the growing presence of robots in our lives, and why I think of them more as our annoying robot neighbours rather than our evil robot overlords. In fact, despite the fact that Elon Musk<\/a>, Stephen Hawking<\/a> and others warn us about the perils of a self aware Skynet-like AI, I think we have as much, if not more to fear from a not-too intelligent artificial mind under the control of a technocratic elite.<\/p>\n The examples above share a few traits in common. First of all, they illustrate the unintended consequences of a technology that can be initially helpful or liberating: technology’s double-edged sword. Secondly, they illustrate the great potential of robots and AI to increase panoptic surveillance in our already surveilled society – extending the reach of corporate or government control, and finally, they show the ways that humans are increasingly called upon to interact in their day-to-day lives, not with other humans who they do not know, but instead with machines or robots.<\/p>\n To date, students needing extra help in school would have used a human teachers aide, or support worker, funerals would be performed by humans, and lifeguards and other safety workers would keep eyes open for dangers on the beach. If robots begin to fill these roles, not only does it open up these spaces to new kinds of watching and recording, not only does it fuel the machines of big data for marketing or population control, but it also may serve to isolate people from one another. Isolated people make great consumers, because they purchase products to help themselves feel better<\/a>. Furthermore, as the Twitter example shows, these technologies, once they become part of our lives, can and will be misused by others. The more systems we surrender to networked technology, the more vulnerabilities we have to concern ourselves with: human, technological or otherwise.<\/p>\n So, I’m not worried about skynet or our robot overlords. Instead, I feel like that particular concern distracts from the things we really should be thinking critically about: chief amoung them being what are the effects of the endless encroachment of technology into our human systems? Are these developments making us happier and more connected? Or more isolated and alone? Who controls these technologies and how do they benefit from them? And finally, how might these technologies be misused by others. These concerns are much more pressing and relevant than a self aware malevolent AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robots have been all over my various news feeds of late. Here are just a few examples: From Slate: Russian bots posing as regular people are trying to sow discord on Twitter after Charlottesville From the Guardian: The future of funerals? Robot priest launched to undercut human-led rites From Business Insider: Robots are starting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Two](\"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/jhodson\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/175\/2017\/08\/527207577_a041422cbc_b-1024x768.jpg\")