Will Robots and Artificial Intelligence take over the world?

As I sit in my living room overlooking the pool, I can’t express the joy I feel seeing the cleaning robot doing his task, while the automatic lawnmower passes by with his silent doing and the robot-hoover continue in his diligent self-learning and collecting of all sort of dust and crumbles left by my 2 years old daughter.

This is robotics 1.0, those things are not connected, they are not intelligent, and still require some (rare) manual intervention by the analogic being I am. Still, I can spend now more time doing what my brain finds more interesting, and fulfilling my heart demands … what will happen when Robotics 2.0 and 3.0 will be around?

image credit: inbenta.com

One of the subject I’ve been wandering on is all the buzz on the loss of millions jobs due progress in A.I. and Robotics, and how eventually a “singularity” event will see the automated entities overthrow human beings.

There is no doubt the “Robotics Revolution” will happen, much like industrial revolution and the informational one have contributed to progress of mankind. It’s not the “if” but, the “when” scenarios like the ones described by Isaac Asimov will materialize.

As usual thinkers split nearly even between the Armageddon theorists and the Heaven-on-Earth columnists.

The former suggest a society of jobless, with countless homeless and social unrest as welfare states can’t support the load. The argument being that automation will be more efficient and ultimately will eliminate tasks most people perform. Think to the prospect of self-driving cars centrally controlled by large taxi companies replacing millions of private hire and taxi drivers. The next level is then the A.I. growth and potential risks associated with uncontrolled “super-human” capabilities. A great book I’m reading help explore this scenario fully, and also suggest how pre-empting is the only option we have. Again Asimov with his law of robotics already foresaw it coming.

image credit: Ex-Machina, 2015 (if you haven't seen it yet, check it out !)

On the other end, and I count myself into this group, we have the ones thinking human beings are the most adaptable and will continue to stay at the top of the food chain. I believe more in a Star Trek-esque society, where work become a way to thrive in own strengths, and not an activity for subsistence.

As I look at my daughters I’m happy they will never know what cleaning a swimming pool, or hoovering the house will mean, and imagine how many skills they will never learn that were vital for me, leaving space to new interesting ones I can’t even fathom.