Date: 30 November 2003
Subject: Robots

What kind of image normally springs to mind when someone mentions "robots"?

Probably for many it will be the new Governor of California proclaiming "I'll be back" in the Terminator series. In film series like the Terminator and the Matrix, robots and supercomputers take over Earth and threaten the freedom or even the very existence of humanity.

For others they may think of "robot wars", with hopeful robot builders and controllers trying to smash each other's robots to pieces – a harmless version of the "real" robot wars where multi-million dollar super-computerised weapons can bring much greater destruction.

So how should we regard the news that in 2003 the sale of domestic robots (according to the newly published World Robotics 2003 report by the UN Economic Commission for Europe) should exude the number of industrial ones. Those in industry generally do boringly repetitive tasks like bolting bits on cars, whilst perhaps the domestic ones are intended to be a bit more flexible. For some $200 you can now get a "robot" which mows the lawn, or a "Roomba IntelliVac"

which vaccums your floors. In case the latter brings a picture of a kind of docile Kryton stomping about your rooms, it turns out to be a not terribly bright little gadget which looks like a domesticated flying saucer. Useful though it might be (depending on your lifestyle), it is not an immediate threat to humanity calling for Neo or Arnie.

Sony's Aibo robotic dog is now over four years old, and currently costs around Ј1400 in the UK. Bought by parents who may feel perhaps that the digital technology will somehow rub off and make children more technical (or perhaps because it is easier to keep than a real dog), again it does not offer much of a future threat.

So do we need to be concerned about the "rise of robots" in our society? Certainly not at present. Futuristic forecasts a few decades ago about how much robots would by now feature in our society have not proven true. Much other forecasting about how much leisure it would bring us all has also proven an illusion. In the next couple of decades, at the present rate, computerisation will get ever cleverer and more miniature. It is not, however, likely to offer much immediate threat. In the more distant future, who knows Human beings in the past have not proved themselves very good at regulating their technological activities sensibly. It may yet prove in the longer term future that the robotics gurus, from Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) onwards, have made some useful points.