Would you like to have breakfast with a robot?
In the eyes of many people, the lives of Swedes are comfortable and relaxed. Sweden’s social welfare is generous, allowing Swedes to enjoy the conveniences and speed brought by high technology and automation. The New York Times once reported on the work of the new Boliden mine in Garpenberg, Sweden, where controllers sat in the control room, monitoring robots working in harsh environments, freeing workers from exhaustion. While the rest of the world worries about robots taking jobs away from them, this worry seems redundant to Swedes as they stay confident about Sweden’s economic model and its protections against unemployment. But they seem to have oversimplified the problem.
In 2016, the World Economic Forum surveyed 15 countries that collectively account for two-thirds of the global workforce — some 1.86 billion workers — and concluded that robotics, artificial intelligence, and the rise of the Internet will destroy 5.1 million jobs in 2020.
But it’s not over yet. A recent AMC sci-fi TV series titled “Humans” has made us reflect more profoundly: Are robots here to liberate human beings or to replace us? The scenes in the show are very likely to appear in our lives in the near future, allowing the audience to visualize not simply a technical imagination, but the alienation of technology to mankind and the ethics of robots. Drivers, babysitters, translators, and other jobs will all be replaced. The future will be a fully intelligent era of self-driving cars, robot babysitters, machine translation, and real-time reports that can be automatically analyzed through stock market data. A pessimistic feeling about the future of humanity is foreshadowed in the eldest daughter’s words: “It takes me seven years to finish medical school, and it will take seven seconds for a robot to learn brain surgery.”
The rise of robots has brought up numerous societal issues. Should we treat them as servants, slaves, or invite them to sit down with us for breakfast? When we become dependent on robots, can we accept that they will be broken and destroyed? If so, what are the ethical implications? Can we terminate their “lives” if they disobey orders, or act spontaneously against our will?
The robots in “Humans” possess human-like qualities and feelings, and the mother feels as if her status is threatened when her youngest daughter becomes emotionally dependent on her robot, Anita. There is an eerie atmosphere as Anita looks at the moon and says, “The moon is so beautiful tonight, don’t you think?”. The audience, just like the other characters, feels that it is more than just a show and a machine. So here’s the big question: if one day such a robot hits the market, would you buy one for yourself?
