I am not the least bit worried about robots “taking over the world”.
Send them in. I’ll take one of each:
- Lawn Mowing Robot
- Housecleaning Robot
- Self-Driving Car
- Grocery Shopping & Errand Running Robot
- Doctor/Physician Assistant Robot
- Pharmacist Robot
- Tooth Cleaning Robot
- Veterinary Robot
Technology doesn’t scare me.
Consider the telephone in my lifetime:
- When I was a kid, every house had one phone (usually in the kitchen). It rang loudly. If someone called and you did not answer, they could not leave a message. Nor could you tell that they called. They had to “get lucky” and catch you at home. Long distance calls (generally anything outside of your town) cost anywhere from $.30-$1 per minute. We usually scheduled these in advance, watched the clock and had groups of people over for a long distance catchup with relatives on holidays. Phones had a rotary dial that took about a minute to dial a call. There was no redial or return call capability. You rented your phone from Bell for a monthly fee.
Over the next 15 years here’s what happened:
- The phone company was deregulated. You could now buy phones from department stores and electronic stores. Eventually push button dialing was available. Then they added a redial button. As this happened, the costs dropped to under $20 then under $10 for some models. Most homes bought 2nd and 3rd phones to put in living rooms, office and bedrooms.
- Cordless Home phones were invented that allows you to walk around inside your house without being tethered to the wall!
- Answering machines were invented that would record a message if you missed a call. Now you knew when someone called you even if you were out!
- The competing phone companies eventually added services like voicemail, caller ID, call blocking and cheaper long distance plans.
Then came car phones, then portable phones, then cell phones, then smart phones. I won’t detail all the benefits – we all use them everyday. It is unbelievable what we can accomplish with this technology. It has completely eliminated so many inconveniences, impossibilities and challenges in our personal, social, societal and business lives.
And phones are just one example of the technology that transformed my life. I could write a similar timeline about computers, cars, shopping, groceries, home repair and dozens of other technological transformations during my 57 years on this planet. And it has not stopped.
The world didn’t end. It changed for sure. Most of the changes, from my perspective, were good. Some were undoubtedly painful for me and for others. For example, I used to sell fax services and then was a bicycle messenger. Those jobs and entire industries were made obsolete.
So what changes will robots and AI bring? Who knows?
I can imagine that robot assisted services will be exponentially cheaper, faster and more convenient, for many tings we do today. Robots will replace humans. Jobs and industries will be eliminated. That will hurt for people directly employed in those industries as well as other who are indirectly affected.
You can probably say the same about any change.
I don’t fear the robots will displace humans entirely.
I guess they could. I saw Terminator and the Matrix. I’ve read science fiction novels. If the world turns into a robot-run dystopian nightmare, I’ll check myself out.
But what if it doesn’t? What if it gets better?
It just might.
Imagine that.
