Are Robots Coming to Get us? (And If They Are ...?)

I posted here long ago about my earliest memories of a robot (link to 2015 post). A boy in Oklahoma in the early 1950s, I used to watch a local program called 3-D Danny. It was a futuristic thing, and Danny (oh, I loved the name!) had a device he called a Synchro Retroveter, which could take viewers back in time to see, oh, Western adventures (old movies--duh). He also had a companion, a friendly robot named Bazark. (Here's a link to a YouTube video of the show.)

3-D Danny & Bazark

Anyway, back then the friendly Bazark convinced me that robots were, well, awesome. It wasn't until later years--and lots of sci-fi films--that I grew to see how menacing they are! They want to take over!

Lately, there's been a bit of publicity (and dire warning) about robots: They're coming for our jobs! This week, for example, The Daily Show is featuring a segment each day about robots and the economy and the labor force. And the worries ...

Of course, there is not a thing new about any of this. Since that unnamed prehistoric human invented the wheel, people have been losing jobs to technological advances. (Gorgo, your services are no longer required to carry these boulders: I now have a ... wagon!)

It happened slowly at first, accelerated during the Industrial Revolution (mid-18th to mid-19th century). Many people lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their professions because of it. Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) is about a guy who copied things, by hand, because copy machines and typewriters, and the like were not yet available. (Bartleby's famous line: "I would prefer not to." Pretty soon, he wasn't able to!)

One other example: The family of Andrew Carnegie came here from Scotland in 1848 (he was a young teen) because his father's occupation--weaver--was rapidly changing: Machines were doing more and more of the work. So ... off to America for a fresh start ...

Gradually, automation and machinery became the villains in many a human story. In England there were the Luddites in the late 18th century; a group of anti-tech folks who destroyed the machinery that they believed was destroying their lives.

And in popular culture the idea of machine-as-enemy rose to become a common theme. I used to show to some of my public-school classes Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times (1936), which has the famous (and metaphorical) image of the Tramp caught up in the machinery in the factory where he worked--and where he was going mad. (You can now see the entire film on YouTube.)

In recent years, the computer-and/or robot-as-enemy is a popular theme in the movies. The idea plays with one of our most fundamental fears: We are not really necessary.

Yeah, some robots are friendly (C3PO, R2D2), but others (most?) are frightening (some of those Evil Transformers).

Anyway, one question emerging from all of this, a question I heard last night on The Daily Show: What will we humans do when machines can do better than we can most of our quotidian and industrial tasks?

Well, I have an answer for that ... tune in tomorrow for the next episode of 3-D Danny, 2018, available on this site!

TO BE CONTINUED ...