• Question: can you make a robot slave?

    Asked by 599smaj27 to Alessandra, Dimitrios, Niamh, Becky, Stacey, Tony on 15 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Stacey Marple

      Stacey Marple answered on 15 Jun 2017:


      Hi well slave would be the wrong term. Maybe house assistant? But yes, many robots are being designed from robots picking goods, vacuuming your home, noodle cutting robot and a robot chef. The difficult task is making a robot capable of doing multiple tasks.

    • Photo: Rebecca Bennett

      Rebecca Bennett answered on 15 Jun 2017:


      I don’t think I would want to

    • Photo: Niamh Ryall

      Niamh Ryall answered on 16 Jun 2017:


      Like Stacey says, we already have some robots that do particular tasks. The term slave implies you own it and that it could otherwise be free? Would we want to do that? I suppose then we need to consider machine consciousness and learning like IBM and Google are working on, which is where it gets complicated. So I don’t know, but I hope not.

    • Photo: Tony Anson

      Tony Anson answered on 16 Jun 2017:


      The reply to this question is I wouldn’t have to make a robot slave, they are already here ! Current technology provides various types of robots that can carry out industrial and even domestic tasks. However, they all require input (programming) from human beings; they do what the human being instructs them to do. But, the future may change this, robots will become more autonomous with technology such as AI (artificial intelligence) enabling them to think for themselves, they will less slave-like then and will produce a lot of issues regarding the role of human beings and robots. perhaps we might become the slaves of the robots in future !

    • Photo: Alessandra Treviso

      Alessandra Treviso answered on 16 Jun 2017:


      Well, a slave doesn’t sound good even if it’s a robot. Robots can do specific tasks already exixts, as the other pointed out.
      Do you know the very famous three laws of robotics developed by Asimov? I think you might enjoy them and reading some of his stories to see the implications of the laws. It’s science fiction but some of the things he wrote about decades ago are so modern and familiar. Worth a check.

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