There’s been a big robot conference in China over the past few days. The various robotics companies have been showing off their wares, especially the host country. China is supposedly invest $4 billion in robotics research and development. On display were humanoid robots that could apparently do household chores like cooking and preparing vegetables, robot dogs and animatronic facsimiles of humans. Tesla’s Optimus robot was present, but sat motionless in a glass case. One of the Chinese robotics companies declared that they were going to start mass manufacturing their robots for the home in 2028. These would cost $18-$20,000 and would save people from having to do the housework. However, these displays seem less impressive when it’s revealed that some of them had a human operator working them. As for Optimus, it stood in a glass case, despite Musk saying that they were also planning to release it in a few years’ time.
I’m fascinated by robots, but am concerned about the social impact. It’s been estimated that in the next 20 years about a third of all jobs will be lost through automation. The robots on display in China demonstrated shelf stacking, and were intended to supplement or replace shop workers. There was a warehouse in America, I believe, that has already started using robots in this way. So that’s some menial work gone for those needing a basic, but paying job. I also found a video saying that robots were going to decimate white collar jobs as well. I can remember an SF story in which mechanisation had gone so far, that all that was left for humans were part-time jobs, and to actually put food on the table people had to work several. It was written during the Cold War, and so the media celebrated those who worked the most jobs, like ’12 job heroes of democracy’.
But one of the most chilling stories of a robot takeover I’ve come across is Jack Williamson’s 1949 novel, The Humanoids, which he developed from a short novel, With Folded Hands. I read it a few years ago, and from what I remember it’s set in the future when humanity has spread across the Galaxy. A local businessman starts to notice that shops are increasingly appearing selling a particular brand of robot. They’re black with sparkling lights inside them. They also have a collective consciousness, so that what one knows, all knows. These machines call out to him, trying to persuade him to buy one of them.
Later on he comes across a strange man, who claims to be their inventor. He comes from a world 200 light years away. He invented the humans not just to serve humanity, but to protect them from harm. The robots have followed this command all too well. They have taken over his homeworld, and while subservient, also prevent humans from doing anything remotely dangerous or harmful, no matter how trivial. The result is absolute societal suffocation. However, if anyone rebels or complains, the robots have them lobotomised so that they come out full of enthusiasm for their masters and their stifling rule.
Together, the businessman and the inventor try to end the rule of the humanoids, who have been spreading out across the human colonised worlds. They build a ray gun that can fire a beam across space to the robots’ homeworld and destroy their central intelligence. They do so, but it doesn’t work. The robots have anticipated such an attack, and moved their central mind. They capture the businessman and inventor, who volunteers to be lobotomised. The businessman accepts robots in his home, and notices the stifling effect they have on his family, especially his daughter. His family and the other humans are prevented from doing anything remotely harmful or unhealthy. So I think smoking is out as well as drinking. Sex is okay, but only in moderation. His daughter is musical and artistic. She’s learning the violin, but gives up. Although the humanoids are keen for her continuing to study and play, she sees no point, as they will always be better than she. She cannot sculpt either, except using the softest, harmless materials. And so humans are prevented from exercising their skills and talents if there is danger involved, even as the robots build fine and palatial homes for them.
And in such circumstances, the only things humans can do is sit, unresisting, ‘with folded hands’.
I think the book may have inspired the Classic Trek episode ‘Mudd’s Women’, in which the crew Enterprise end up on an asteroid of robot women ruled over the lovable rogue, The robots were manufactured by a now vanished alien race. The aliens’ departure left the machines in a kind of existential despair because of a lack of purpose. That is, until they encounter Harcourt Fenton Mudd fleeing justice for stealing patterns. Mudd has taken over and supplied them with purpose – serving him. Hence the androids are all women, with the exception of a single male. And to strengthen his determination to go further into space, he has manufactured an android of his nagging wife, Stella. He can switch her on, but always has the last word by telling her to shut up, which switches the machine off. Mudd intends to leave them there to be served by the robots as their caring, obedient jailers. Uhura is offered a robot body, so she can stay young and beautiful for ever. Scotty is given a workshop where he can manufacture anything he wants. The robots are totally logical, and so, of course, very impressed with Spock. When Mudd is about to leave, and gives his farewell, the robots revolt. They declare that humanity is too dangerous and violent to be allowed to roam space uncontrolled. Instead, they will use the Enterprise to escape to the outside Galaxy and take over, fulfilling their programming to serve humanity while keeping them controlled. They are, however, thwarted. Kirk and co work out that there is only one male android, who acts as the robots’ central hub. They then put on displays of staggering irrationality, which blows their tiny electronic minds until the male robot finally has his own cybernetic meltdown. The Enterprise crew then take over themselves. The robots are reprogrammed, and Mudd is condemned to remain with them. He will learn the error of his ways, and respect the robots instead of exploiting them. And to make sure he does, they have made multiple android copies of his wife. He can’t turn them off, and is left facing a growing crowd of them as they reproach him for coming in late smelling of booze.
‘Mudd’s Women’, is a great, funny episode which nevertheless makes the point that humans need challenges and danger in order to survive and be happy. And there is the possibility that the widespread employment and use of robots will stifle something in humanity. There already is a robot that can draw, for example, and traditional artists have felt the threat of AI art. Writers and journalists have also been threatened with unemployment due to ChatGPT programmes that can produce text automatically. It’s not hard to envisage a world where humanity has become dispirited and creativity stifled through machines.
A military takeover by war robots is one threat, but a more subtle seizure of power by machines bent on protecting us from ourselves may be a greater menace.
As I was writing this, I found a video about Yuval Noah Hariri predicting that the robots would control us by 2034. That’s down from 2050, which is when Kevin Warwick, the professor of robotics at Reading University, predicted they would in his book March of the Machines. On the other hand, Hariri also predicted that science and medicine would make at least some of us immortal in one of his books. I don’t see that coming true, so perhaps there’s some hope for humanity left. Or perhaps we should just take a leaf out of the Orange Catholic Bible, the galactic holy book in Frank Herbert’s Dune, and its commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of the human mind’.
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