| The thing I think everyone should be most worried about is not robots deciding to kill us, it's the economic upheaval that could result from robots that can do jobs better than their human counterparts. There's been studies done on this type of thing (https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/jobs/robot...) and so far use of robots has mostly focused on helping human workers become more productive, and not replacing them entirely. However, for lower skilled workers this isn't always true, and if robots were able to replace even the most skilled workers... that could cause problems for human employment. To quote the article on current status: "Robots had no effect on the hours worked by high-skilled workers. While the authors found that industrial robots had no significant effect on overall employment, there was some evidence that they crowded out low-skilled and, to a lesser extent, middle-skilled workers." Now continue that line of thinking and imagine a world where a robot could do any job better than a human... We could end up with a "is that American made?" or "is that free range chicken?" type of scenario where companies that refuse to replace human workers with robots are competing against other companies that will do anything to lower costs, even if ethically questionable. So then we potentially end up in a situation where the rich (Executives and stock holders) get richer by replacing costly human workers with cheaper, more efficient robots, and the wealth of the average family declines as people struggle to find work. Alright, well maybe we give all humans an allowance to live off of, food to eat, a home to live in, etc. Except... Human beings need work. They need to feel a sense of purpose. I don't think the humans from the movie Wall-E hold much appeal. Let's not go there. Ok, so maybe we pass laws against replacing many human jobs with robots. Well, if the robots are truly intelligent, aren't we then discriminating against a group of sentient beings solely because they are too good at their job? Isn't this just going to be a techno world version of the civil rights and lgbt rights movements? These are the things I worry about. Not robots killing me. As a side note, I hope cyborg and other bio tech improves at some point, at lot of these concerns could be mitigated if humans had the potential to improve themselves beyond any normal evolutionary rates. |
It's probably the most valid result from the research and yet it is overlooked. We'll have AI capable of replacing the middle class before we have robots capable of replacing the working class.