There are two envisioned futures about man’s relationship with machine. A common sci-fi theme popular with Hollywood is that one day titanium robots will have AI, bullet proof alloys and mechanics capable of overriding their Human masters and enslave the entire carbon-based population. This has never scared me because as a technoliterate, I understand that robots cant do what they aren’t programmed to do. The other more likely and thought about dilemma is that putting computers in control of vacuum cleaners and fighter jets and anything in between will make humans redundant and jobless and ruin the entire global economy and mankind will ironically be returned to the stone age. Again, as a technoliterate, this idea has never particularly bothered me either, the more computers there are in the world, the more job openings there are for my kind. Last week however, I realised the despair of the robot future.
Coming home from London Euston, I realised the train was running late, and that I was going to miss my connection at Warrington. This meant I wasn’t going to be in Manchester in time for the meal with friends, and I had a feeling that my due connection was the last train of the night. As the train finally arrived in Warrington, the driver announced apologetically that we were late because of vandals throwing stones at the trains further up the line, which didn’t make me feel any better about the delay, but at the same time, not much worse about it either. As I hopped off and wandered the platform in the rain, a tannoy announced that it was sorry for the inconvenience, this is when I got angry:
You what? You’re a robot, how could you possibly understand the concept of inconvenience, let alone feel sympathy or regret for it? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you’ve turned all sentient and capable of emotion and its (dis)comforts? I’m glad I’m only thinking this, because I refuse to yell at an inanimate object. I don’t know if anyone can tell, but right now I’m silently raging at the fact that Network Rail had to employ a computer to absorb all their shame. Right now they’re probably fast asleep in bed, when they should be the ones getting yelled at!
This (with a swearword inserted at every other syllable and mostly thought up in uppercase) is the moment I realised why I don’t want robots taking our jobs. Because you can’t yell at robots. I actually prefer the Hollywood robot future, where robots become sentient and take over the world, because at least they can genuinely apologise for what they’ve done. If our future to be built by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation then I’m not interested.
I’m reminded now of an idea for a comic book a friend came up with back in college. What we need is a computer to be in charge of the world, and the computer is to be powered by happiness of the people, and itself feel happy to not be shut down.