What Your Fear of Robots Says About You?
The idea of humans cohabiting with robots really seems to rub most people the wrong way. A common scenario causing this fear is that artificial intelligence will become so great, it will take over the world and either control us or kill our species. Whether we will be able to develop conscious robots or superior AI, at the current moment is a fundamental unknown. However, we can reflect on what our projected fear towards robots is saying about our current culture and the western worldview in general. Furthermore, we should consider this reflection in our present time, and more seriously talk about our approach to integrating these entities.
Humanity’s Dominion Over Nature
If you think about it, the idea of owning or controlling anything is a relatively new concept on our evolutionary timeline. Humans hunted and forged in nature, but never laid claim to any entities within it. This ideology is still evident in many indigenous groups across the world. However, the idea that humans are simply a part of nature is drastically different from the western worldview. The west believes humans have dominion over the nature. We can see the idea played out currently with practices like factory farming, or more generally land ownership. Yuval Noah Harari draws our separation from being a part of nature to ruling over it back to when humans first started to farm and domesticate animals. We can draw human’s ideas of ownership from this evolution of behavior and ideology. It is important to note the connection between new technology, in this example agricultural practices, and our ideas of ownership. Our early beginnings with dominion “over” nature has morphed within our species in a multitude of ways. Our history is filled with attempts to rule over others and more drastically, even periods of human slavery(“ownership” of other humans). Additionally, this concept of human dominion has left our earth’s condition worse off.
Joi Ito, director of the MIT media lab, recently published an article about why Japanese culture more easily accepts the idea of integrating with robots. He discusses how practitioners of eastern philosophies, like Shinto and Buddhism, lend themselves to more easily adopt robots. The main reason is because their way of thinking doesn’t exclude humans from the world around them. Furthermore, that all things share a certain essence. I think these examples are able to give us a sense that our attitude toward robots are biased by cultural history, rather than the “true” nature of these relationships. The interesting twist with developing “artificial” intelligence is that it poses one of the first tangible threats to our conceptual dominion “over” nature. Even worse for human pride we could be knocked off the top spot by superior intelligence.
However, these are both narratives, and not reality. Our concept of hierarchical dominion is deeply ingrained for some, though we can understand how these ideas have been constructed over time. What the current pressures of our technological progress offer us, is a platform to rethink and rework what it is to be human. Also the type of life we wish to be living. By creating new forms of intelligence, we are forced to more deeply consider our own intelligence. By introducing the possibility of a new dynamic of relationships with robots, we must reflect on the dynamic of our current relationships both as a human and as a species.
Peacefully Co-Existing with Robots
At the moment, I don’t think whether the robots are intelligent or not is really important for our discussion. What I think is important, is that we seriously consider how our treatment of these entities affects us. My concern is that dehumanization ultimately leads to desensitization. If robots do become an integrated part of our life, intelligent or not, our behavior towards them still affects us. For example, there was a famous experiment in the 60’s where children watched how adults interacted with a blow-up doll. When the adults acted kindly toward the doll the children did as well, and when the adults hit and abused the doll the children followed suit. I think it follows that abusive behavior towards robots, would have a similar modeling effect on our children. So, that when we treat these non-biological entities wrongly, we are perpetuating a toxic model of relationships to all those involved. Now imagine a society filled with non-biological entities, there to help more effectively fulfill humanity’s needs. Why shouldn’t we strive for peaceful co-habitation, rather than fear it?
However, if we choose perpetuate our desire to “dehumanize”, and thus desensitize, all things not human, then we run the risk of surrounding ourselves with toxic relationships. Before I continue on, I think it is important to note I am not advocating for losing our humanness, or even considering robots human-like. Rather, I am challenging our implicit bias to develop these hierarchical relationships around us just because we are human. I think this moment in time offers us a chance to re-calibrate how we want to exist within the world. We can develop better guidelines and models for how we want to relate to others.
A Genuine Partnership
At this point, you are either wondering why you are still reading an article from someone who thinks robots can be considered a part of nature, or eager to hear how this relationship can even work? First, we have to understand that everything we consider “artificial” intelligence is actually the product of human intelligence. It is a human endeavor to obtain new knowledge and improved our quality of life. Also that these AI systems still require a lot of human effort to train and maintain. So, we are an integral part of the generation of artificial intelligence. This is because it is an extension of our own knowledge. I think the ideas of extended knowledge and collaboration are key to creating a positive future.
There is actually a council already working to encourage designers, developers, and society at large to see our relationship with these emerging technologies as a partnership, rather than humans vs. machines. The Council on Extended Intelligence is a multi-disciplinary team of thought leaders who seek forge a positive vision of our future. Their vision includes collaborating with machines and artificial intelligence to extend our knowledge. Their idea of extended intelligence stems from the belief that knowledge is fundamentally distributed. This means that different disciplines or even individual people contribute their knowledge to our overall knowledge base. Therefore, the contribution of artificial intelligence is a natural progression to expand our knowledge. Instead of looking at AI as something foreign, unknown, and scary to us, we can look at it as a partner in expanding our knowledge.
To me the most interesting dynamic in talking about the future is it forces us to look backward. It brings to the surface many deep rooted assumptions. I think it is fascinating how a discussion about accepting robots lends itself to questions what really is human intelligence, and how we use our intelligence to operate within the world. I hope going forward when talking about the future, you can consider some of these deeper ingrained ideas into your conversation. If we can more holistically approach our conversation of the future, we may actually create the positive future we wish to live in.
