Thoughts on robots and fiction

The word, robot, comes from the Slavonic rabota and it was first used in a 1920’s play by a Czech writer called Karel Capek. Rossum’s Universal Robots, the title of the play and name of the company, are mass-producing “soulless” workers to do the dirty work of humanity. We are building such robots today, for inspecting nuclear sites, underground mines, and to aid in agriculture and manufacturing. They may be autonomous or need partial human input. It’s a start, but we are still far away from the likes of Wall-E.

Science fiction is rife with robots and AI rising up against us, their makers. I very much enjoyed Westworld*, Bladerunner and The Matrix, to name some prime candidates in this category. Isaac Asimov conceived of the Three Laws of Robotics in his story, Runaround, in 1942 – a set of rules intended as robot moral code. The three laws are food for thought in the larger conversation on how to make our creations safe for integration in society – the ultimate goal?

It’s easy to dismiss fiction as escapism, out-of-touch with reality, but I would argue that stories are one of the most powerful tools we have: stories show us what is possible. Researchers undertook a study** of the influence of science fiction on human computer interaction research, finding a sort of feedback loop between the two. If fiction is a sandbox for ideas, then it seems like the perfect place to explore what a robot-dependent world might look like – and so much more.

*season 1
**https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08395