Are robots going to make our lives easier, or more convenient for someone else’s agenda of profit and control?
Here are some current global trends1 in robotics:
There are over 3.4 million industrial robots in the world today
Industrial companies plan to invest 25% of their capital in industrial automation over the next five years
14% of workers have lost their jobs to robots
From Rosie the Robot to Robocop, past generations have been programmed to think robots will be a boon to society. The original robots were meant to do the mundane, and support civil society.
Issac Asimov, who coined the word “robotics” generally characterized the robots in his short stories as helpful servants of man, and proposed three "Laws of Robotics" that his robots, as well as sci-fi robotic characters of many other stories, followed:
Law 1 - A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Law 2 - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Law 3 - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Today we are breaking all of those laws, with robots that serve the military police-surveillance state, as robo-vacuum cleaners and gadgets become harvested data points, eventually used against our best interest. How do we build servants, rather than become slaves of a master robot race we ourselves have created?
Join us as we discuss:
The history of robotics
Robots in pop culture
Economic impacts of robotics
Robots and the future of our humanity
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