Blogs ‘R’ Alex

A few days ago, I was one of the few "lucky" people who got their online banking accounts, in preparation for the phasing-out of over-the-counter service. Our local bank in MMU will be semi-automated, and any clerk-assisted transactions will have a service charge of RM2. Then it hit me: machines are taking over people’s jobs!! OMG!!

That’s not new news though; machines have been replacing human labour in so many industries all over the world, in the richer countries mostly. Do a google on robots and you’ll see robots everywhere: robots playing football, robots playing musical instruments, robots looking more "human" than humans, robots cleaning house, etc. All this is just a few decades of development since Mr Isaac Asimov coined up the word "robotics".

With "Terminator" and "I, Robot" in mind, I got around to reading some of Asimov’s science fiction on robots and how they (potentially?) can go wrong, even with the Three Laws of Robotics hardwired into them. Did I say science fiction? Could they be predictions of the future of robotics?

Only a matter of time, people, before machines are going to be doing so many of what we are accustomed of doing now. Oh, so machines can’t simulate creative works the likes of da Vinci and Mozart. But machines landed on Mars before humans. Heck, machines (Voyagers 1 and 2) may be the first to initiate contact with extraterrestrials!! Machines don’t let emotions affect their work, machines are predictable, accurate, and punctual, machines do what they are told.

Conclusion: machines make the perfect labor force, leaving us "superior" beings more free time to do what they can’t do -> making life harder for other people with bureaucracy, greed, and ravaging the world’s natural resources at the same time. A civilization, we call ourselves? Agent K in "Men in Black" sums it up for us, "Human thought is so primitive it’s considered an infectious disease."

P.s. I am taking a degree in Robotics and Automation  XD

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 7:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.