Well, we haven’t got fully autonomous robots yet but people are surely working on it. At the moment there are robots that have been seen debating one another and there is work being done to accomplish the marvel of the driverless car. So far the biggest news on that front is the driverless shuttle that managed to crash into a semi truck. And then of course if you want you can buy an Echo or other device to arrange and manage your day and your home via whatever handheld device you happen to be using at the moment. You can even unlock and lock your door from a remote distance if you have the right software installed. Does anyone see a trend happening here? Any more advances in technology and the film I, Robot, might actually have been a futuristic documentary of what’s to come.
Let’s hope not in some regards. Keep in mind that the upgraded robots in this film did happen to turn on their creators by using the same laws that were instilled by the creators. They figured out that humanity was responsible for its own downfall and were about to use this as a reason to detain and possibly imprison all of humanity for the simple reason that they were self-destructive. It’s kind of like locking your parents up when you’re kids because you know that they’re going to engage in deviant or negative behaviors. It makes just as little sense too.
If you take a look at the movie however you’ll notice that a lot of what they added in is in some way being used now by modern-day standards. The Alexa and Echo are devices that can essentially control your home in a limited capacity, while there are apps that allow you to even turn on your lights if you happen to be somewhere else. You can install a camera at your front door that will send alerts when someone is there and you can basically keep tabs on your house and who’s coming and going no matter where you are. It’s almost as if the movie was the inspiration for a lot of this.
Granted the systems in I, Robot were embedded in the walls throughout whole house, but they served the same purpose and could be remote-accessed as well. It’s essentially a prison that you can’t escape even if you manage to leave the office and go home. In many ways this is humanity trapping itself by continuing to advance their knowledge in the technological fields that are beginning to lead us down paths that seem a trifle uneasy.
Some people would call this ridiculous since no one is going to intentionally create a robot that can think for itself, but isn’t that what AI is? Isn’t that something that’s being attempted anyway? I don’t know, I’m a writer, not a scientist and not an engineer, but it seems as though humanity is wading once again into uncharted waters and doesn’t seem to realize there could be a dropoff coming at any moment.
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