Last week on Jeopardy, Watson, the modern-day Deep Blue IBM computer designed to answer Alex Trebek’s questions, dominated his human contestants Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. At the end of the three-day run, Jennings said that he “welcomes our new computer overlords.”† While he was mostly kidding, is he really all that wrong?
Since the ’80s, when robots were designed to help with car construction, our society has gotten progressively more reliant on robotics and technology to do our jobs ó whether they be menial or incredibly complicated.† The reliance on these machines has become so engrained into our society that even heart surgeons feel pressure from their robotic counterparts. According to CNN.com, the Da Vinci Surgical System has decreased recovery time for heart surgery patients from “a couple weeks” to “a few days.” Machines can work all day, do things better than humans, such as welding, slicing through metals, and be more precise with these motions, and as I’m sure Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would appreciate that robots can’t unionize.
However, these machines aren’t necessarily all good, as a singular machine could replace hundreds of factory workers.† Detroit’s unemployment, for instance, as a city built on the car industry, started increasing in the ’80s, when the very first robot was used in a car company.† Increased machinery developments have left† a lot of our workers jobless. Even further, it makes Charlie Chaplain’s “Modern Times” incredibly out of date!
There’s a lot of possibility in our expansion into machines and robotics.† Our experiments with artificial intelligence in robots come with a lot of ethical concerns.† If Watson can’t figure out that Toronto isn’t a city in the United States, how can we trust a robot to act when presented with an ethical dilemma?† Would it be a utilitarian? A moral relativist? †In short, it’s unpredictable to tell what kind of decision a robot would make.† There’s something intrinsically ineffable and unprogramable about being a human.† It’s a combination of our irrationality, sentimentality and selfishness.
This continuing, inevitable surge in technology and mechanics could have some extreme consequences.† While I doubt we’ll ever be in need of a screwdriver to unplug whatever version of HAL-9000 that’ll come up in our lives, we do need to be cautious of our continued reliance on technology.† With our cell phones becoming “smarter,” our computers becoming faster, and our books becoming digitalized, we should be wary of our need to have things plugged in.† Technology has already infiltrated the most tech-proof areas of our life: exercise.† The advent of the Wii has made golfing, basketball and tennis a sport where we don’t have to move out from in front of our televisions
Even with all of the negatives, I, like Ken Jennings and Homer Simpson before him, welcome our new computer overlords.† There’s a lot to love about our new mechanical companions! These technological advancements have been incredibly significant in making our lives easier, more accessible and thanks to the Da Vinci Surgical System, longer.