Michael Wu

R4B
Prof. Sloan
Proj 1 Full Draft
Although the concept of robot has existed since the Greek era at around 400 BC, the
first remotely operated vehicle was demonstrated in the late 19th Century, and the term
“robot” was not applied as artificial automata until the 20th century. Technology advanced at an
unseen rapid speed in the merely several decades, and such improvement brought a different
style of living for its inventors. This paper will examine how the evolution of technology, with a
focus on robotics, brought changes to human life, and how human’s perspective changed
dramatically during this rapid progression. And at the end, this paper will discuss possible
future application of technology and their corresponding concerns.

Robots as a collaborative
When it was first invented, robot’s purpose was to help its inventor achieve things in a
more efficient and effective way. The word “robota” in Slavic language means forced labor, a
term that classified peasants who are obligated for compulsory service under the 19th century
feudal system. (Interesting Literature) Robots are really tools. As a matter of fact, one of the
first “robot” was invented by Su Song, a Chinese inventor, who built a mechanical figurines
which chimed the hours. (Wikipedia) For earlier version of the robot, there was one specific
purpose or task that its inventor wants it to complete, and that task is normally simple, yet
require a lot of manual work. Such as the clock, chiming at each hour is a very repetitive task,
and it would be really efficient to spend some time making a robot, and have it repeat this
repetitive task while its inventor tries to focus on making more social progresses. Therefore,
just as the Slavic language implies, peasants who are obligated for compulsory work.
During the industrial revolution, people realized how useful those machines are. Many
workers got laid off because their repetitive skills are replaced by robots. Fast forward to the
21st century, machines are everywhere. As Kim Tingley wrote “Collaborative robots, designed to
fill flexible roles and be smaller and easier to integrate among employees and existing
machines, may have a subtler effect, raising the need for more nuanced measures of their
socioeconomic impact”. These collaborative robots are very useful; they are reprogrammable;
they are fully automated; they cost less than hiring a worker in the long term. Therefore, the
number of these robots
have increased
“fourfold between 1993
and 2003 in the US and
Europe”(Gillian
White). A report by Daron
Aceoglu from MIT and
Pascual Restrepo of the
Boston University
shows that a new robot
amount to an average of 3
workers. ”(Gillian White) Robots contributed to a significant amount of social output that we
have never seen before. In 1999, there were 56 million cars produced world-wide; in 2017,
there were 97 million cars produced.( www.oica.net) Furthermore, according to wgntv.com, the
cost of the car also decreased after adjusting according to inflation: in 1999, a car would cost a
family nearly $30,000, while in 2016, the cost is $25,000. From these data, we can witness the
magic of robotics – increase of production leads to decrease of product price, leading to
increase of consumer demand. In a socioeconomic perspective, robots really are highly
beneficial to the total output. This total output drives the prices for consumer products down,
allowing more people to afford the once luxury items, enhancing the average quality of life.
Furthermore, the invention of Artificial Intelligence will further the collaboration
between human and machines. As the professor Manuela Veloso from the Carnegie Mellon
stated in her interview: “I believe that there will be a co-existence between humans and
artificial intelligence systems that will be hopefully of service to humanity.” The future
interaction between human and machine will be more than simply asking the machine to
execute a simple task. With complex algorithms such as machine learning, the interaction is
going to be a lot more complex, leading to a closer relationship between the human and robots.
In fact, this trend has already begun with the invention of smart phone and Google. From asking
Siri how’s the weather to Google’s personalized search optimization, these are all signs that
technologies have seeped deep into our daily life such that it would be extremely difficult for us
to not use it. I, as a computer science student, do not know how much I depend on my phone
and Wi-Fi everyday until I had a 3 day trip to Yosemite, where there is no Wi-Fi, and therefore
all the technology became essentially useless. Those 3 days are truly a unique experience – it
truly led me felt the pain of leaving Google Map and learning how to use an actual map.
However, this shows how much people depends on technology that we don’t even realize how
we no longer know how to survive without it.
This experience lead to the second topic – the changing view of the advancement of
technology despite all the benefits it brought.

Robots overthrow its inventor

It is quite obvious that despite robots have yet to become fully autonomous and able to
overthrow humanity, individual intelligence can no longer compete against robots. Especially
with the recent Go tournament where the Artificial intelligence beats human(www.npr.org),
the prospect that robots are going to outsmart human seems to in the near future.
Alan Turing, the inventor of Computer, stated in 1930s that “at some point computers
would probably exceed the intellectual capacity of their inventors”. However, he was not the
first one to observe that. Karel Capek, who coined the modern meaning of the word “robot”,
portrayed in his 1920 play how the robots, coming out of factory that are designed to serve
humans and work for them, eventually turn on their masters, wiping out the human race.
(Interesting Literature) It is quite obvious that fear for an all-on war against robot within the
intellectuals exist for a long time, even before the technology was able to support robot to do
many tasks. Not only the intellectuals, the fear of robots, simply due to their capacity of
intelligence, is deep rooted across classes.