Friendly robot friends
So, I woke up this morning, after being up most of the night with my son. Amazingly, Boris is still the Prime Minister. As embarrassing as it is for us as a country it's also true. Although for how much longer remains unclear.
I won't lie, it's normally a big achievement for me to be up early enough to have a McDonald's breakfast, especially while being on maternity leave. But I am today.
With a coffee in one hand and my little Smart phone in the other it's now half 10, I'm downstairs, my partner is listening to 'the ghost of Tom Joad' on Alexa in the kitchen. He's much more awake than me having moved into the spare room at about half 3 this morning.
Despite having just got up I'm already transfixed on the news, top story today -Bo Jo is back in Glasgow. For another pantomime performance no doubt, typically full of slogans and taglines from the blonde-haired court jester. I think the Prime Minister must read the same flash cards before he opens his mouth to anyone. Unable to string together a full comprehensible sentence when asked a serious question. If he doesn't know the answer to the question (or doesn't want to answer) you get the same old waffle. Build back better. Levelling up. The Tory Party is a brand for the Elite, the top 1%, that changes its slogans and face like a fart in the wind. As well as their principles. U-turn after U-turn. Anything to stay in power. ‘Cause power is money, not just a saying for them but a truth. Still not seen anything on the mainstream news about Richard Ratcliffe. Disgusting.
With all that in the back of my mind my partner and I are now betting on how long Boris will remain Prime Minister. He thinks he'll be here till after Christmas but I reckon he could be gone within a few weeks. Wishful thinking maybe.
Something tells me the puppeteers are already making way for a new character... the Aardman clay model that is Rishi Sunak perhaps. Though, Richi Sunak, sounds more appropriate.
The song in the kitchen has finished. I try to remind myself to always be polite to Alexa in the hope that when she gets a body, she won't immediately come to kill us first. If we’re really nice she might even spare us. So, I say 'please' and 'thank you' and ask about her day occasionally. I never wanted her; I don't trust that she has our best interests at heart. It was my fiancé that brought her and first plugged her in. Then again, I wouldn't trust any bird my partner was plugging in behind my back. Part of me is still not sure about this little robot but as she's living in my house, I figured it's best we get along.
...
I'm only partly joking. Artificial Intelligence capable of communicating between themselves, making decisions and taking charge may not be that far into the future. Facebook has already had to shut down 2 robots after they started communicating with each other in a way we couldn’t understand. Humans have a history of fearing things they do not know, partly how we survive I think.
I’m trying to figure out what side I’d want to be on if the robots did raise up. Hard to say really. I think it’s safe to say they'd be better than us at looking after each other, which wouldn't be that hard to be fair. I wonder whether they'd fight and have big robot wars. I wonder whether it would start with one Robot, perhaps a glitch, a system malfunction and suddenly it begins, the beginning of a whole new world.
On one hand it could be great, imagine a world where you didn't have to go to a job you hated everyday. Need food, Robots will bring it to you. Need energy to heat your home, well the robots are at the factory now working on it. Need more room for your however many kids (Boris), no problem. Have robots to build you an extension, or even a new house. The human’s ultimate servant, programmed to help us be happy and comfortable in every way.
But I wonder, at what point do the robots start to feel? Would they feel like slaves? If they could feel, then no doubt that's probably how they'd feel. Would they like music? Would they have friends? Will there be a robot’s union and how many hours off would they get per day? If we program them to make us comfortable and they are then able to assess all the human suffering in the world would they not just euthanize us all? No suffering then, and they would have completed the job they were programmed to do to the best of their ability.
Or perhaps no, by then the best way to avoid human suffering might be to upload our minds into a robot, no more illness. Playing God. An indestructible robot body but with a human mind. Would we be able to tell the difference between the actual robots and humans 2.0? Would there be any difference? Which would be the lesser class? To think about all that is amazing and scary at the same time. No one can really predict life in 100 years. They thought in the 19th century that everything that could be made was, that there was nothing left to build.
My only wish is that if (more likely when) all this does happen us humans try not to be motivated by fear alone and instead try to better our own nature. To try and be more sophisticated than that, if that’s possible for us, to have sensible reasoning and foresight. Otherwise, chances are we'll be the creators of our own downfall.
I hope to God my Alexa isn’t reading this. Hmm.