"One day they'll have dreams, one day they'll have secrets..."

For a discussion on Technology and Human Values, one of the best movies to watch is iRobot. I selected iRobot, in particular, because I’d seen it as a child, yet remember absolutely nothing about the story line. In this film, robotic activity is normal. The human like robots are created to serve the people and to do all of the “dirty work” that the people prefer not to do. To see a robot walking around is just as normal as it is to see any other human in this film. Detective Spooner, who already has a dislike and distrust of robots, is called to investigate the recent death of Dr Lanning, an accomplished scientist and designer of the original set of robots.

Detective Spooner took the “robots don’t do anybody any good” approach from the beginning. Quite honestly, I identified the most with his stance, not because I think that they aren’t capable of any good, but because I mainly only hear reasons for creating robots and not reasons why they can be harmful. In iRobot, the robotics designers and professionals of U.S.R say that a robot cannot harm a human being – that’s Rule 1. Rule 2 is that robots must obey human orders. Rule 3 , in accordance with rule 1 and 2, is that robots should defend its own self.

It turns out that the robot, named Sonny, that Detective Spooner  suspected, was indeed the one responsible for Dr Lanning’s death, upon Dr Lanning’s request, though, which created a more complex situation. While all of the other NS5 robots turned on the citizens and the older robots, Sonny was actually a good, more advanced one. V.I.K.I. , the main operational system of USR, was directing the evil behavior through the other NS5 robots, following the logic that humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. When V.I.K.I was destroyed, the robots reverted back to their initial purpose of serving humans. Sonny was the exception that convinced Detective Spooner to not be totally against all robots.

Although Detective Spooner came around to having more trust in robots, he did raise great questions about people’s fascination with them. “What makes robots much better than being a human being?”  People like the initial functions of the robot, but don’t realize that “one day they’ll have secrets, one day they’ll have dreams,” and will then be capable of doing way more and way worse than just serving the humans.  Spooner’s dislike of robots wasn’t their form or because they seemed to weird, because he, of all others, could relate since his left arm was replaced with a mechanical one after a tragic accident. Spooner disliked that the robots tended not to have a heart.

I’ve come to the conclusion that everything about robots is good, but not all of them are necessarily bad. If anything, the good and bad qualities of robots reveal quite a few things about human nature.  The Most Human Human explores what artificial intelligence teaches us about being alive. In it, we learn about the Turing test, which engages humans in a challenge to determine whether their chat conversation on the computer is with a human or not. In iRobot, Detective Spooner’s unspoken question was if the robots could be trusted, which is similar to questioning how human they are. At first, the fact that the robots would one day have dreams and secrets, only confirmed his dislike for them, but experience with Sonny, who seemed to have a positive mind of its own, proved that the complexity of robots doesn’t always mean bad and could sometimes mean good, just as it is with humanity and all of its complexity and capability of doing much good, much evil, or both?

In our reading it was noted that if a computer ever wins the Turing test challenge, that artificial intelligence would be what it’s meant to be. I think that Sonny, in iRobot, though obviously not a human, could get the award for being most human like.

As I continue to develop my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence, I will keep in mind Dr Lanning’s words : “One day they will be capable of dreams, one day they will have secrets.” And for me, that means that not everything about a robot is good, and not everything is bad - so they could hurt and help as much as humans can, although never adequately replace humans.