Technological Times

On a random hunch, I checked out a novel from the library entitled The Adventures of the Artifical Woman. It's the story of a man who, dissatisfied with the females in his life, creates a cybernetic wife for himself who is capable of learning and becoming "more human" over time ... eventually she runs amok and ends up campaigning for president, etc. Vagaries of fancy, right?

Yeah, we hope so. Just a few days later, I received a Sharper Image catalog that features a full-page ad for what is called "Robosapien." Read: "Meet Robosapien, the dynamic robot-humanoid who is loaded with as much personality as you can handle -- rambunctious, fiesty, moody, animated, intelligent ... and yours to guide and master with easy remote-controlled programming. You will find yourself believing Robosapien is a thinking, feeling person! The rubust but advanced Robosapien is a robot companion and entertainer that enthusiasts of any age can enjoy for only $99.95."

Now, all redundancies and unintentional alliterations aside, does anyone find this paragraph a little unsettling? Don't get me wrong, here -- this thing mostly looks like a hundred-dollar gag. It belches, knocks things down, etc. It's the sort of thing a petit-bourgeois with unrefined taste and some spare pocket-change would give to a drinking buddy. But the mindset behind it is the same mindset that impelled the character in the novel: essentially, real people are no fun, because their desires get in the way of mine. Of course we long for personality, so this robot has it built in "attitude," but it is also "yours to control." Is there not something faintly sadistic, not to mention overweeningly autocratic, about desiring a companion who is at once friend and slave? Something that will perform for you on call, with no feelings -- something you can treat any way you like without feeling an iota of guilt?

Of course robotics is a valid and useful field -- it may help the working man, in time, be relieved of some of the most detrimental and repetitive processes in the labour market, among many other positive things. But I think the countless sci-fi tales of robots becoming all too intelligent and dominating humans are misguided: the real danger of robots is what they can do to us. Artificial intelligence isn't going to make man a slave; rather, the enslavement of artificial intelligence is more likely to make him a tyrant. As much as you replace social interaction with AI, you're going to have to deal with humans at some time. When you do, will you treat him like one made imago Dei, or like just another unfeeling Robosapien?