Robots Not Wanted
This is AM with your CC (hear the radio read!)
I feel like today's version of the guy a hundred years ago that said we shouldn't abandon the horse drawn carriage for the gas powered car.
When it comes to technology-- We are not ready for the future because we haven't even figured out the present.
The data is not kind to humanity's relationship with social media for example. Quitting social media often leads to reduced anxiety, better sleep, higher self-esteem, and less overstimulation. Studies and personal accounts show people feel more at peace, with lower rates of depression and ADHD-like symptoms from constant scrolling.
Not a hard argument to make, but my focus today is about the future, which undeniably will soon be all about robots.
Just a quick look into the future tells me that Robots would hurt the good guys as well as the bad guys.
Let's get into it
Robots - consider the reality of shoplifting and ID theft - mischief programing will be a thing.
While you might be thinking to yourself, the government will likely mandate tracking and registration for these machines. And before we get into that , lets just stay on this a minute.
The danger of robot crime is that they are smarter faster and can subject themselves to risks that human beings cannot and it also puts humans attempting to intervene in harms way.
Mischief programming will be seen as multiple robots work in Unison. Imagine a trio of bank robbing robots. Even if you have an armed security guard it wouldn't make much difference
I used to think we weren't ready, now I've come to realize that we will never be ready!
Robot cops will have a lot of problems too. There is no way to teach the subtleties of which laws actually matter. As Tacitus once said, the more laws the more corrupt the state. And in California we live under a mind boggling amount of laws that we all violate here and there. A robot cop would pounce on you for all these incidents and poorly run cities would see boosts in revenue from fines along with big savings for replacing policemen with robots. The sharp increase in fines would actually hurt the economy but ultimately make society harder to live in.
The downsides to too much tracking and constant mandated firmware updates is that in malevolent government hands these robots could be used for tyranny. Imagine the next time we have a pandemic lockdown or a curfew and for some reason you need to leave the house. A time could come where your very own robot either physically restrains you or calls into the local government office to report your mischief.
During Covid we saw neighbors ratting on each other and it was pathetic, nosy neighbors would want nosy robots.
We haven't even gotten automated cars right.
These vehicles have a sketchy liability on our roads that isn't the same for you and I. As a recent video emerged of an autopilot car getting pulled over by CHP, and the cop had to talk to someone over in India to let it know a moving violation occurred!
So even though there is tracking it doesn't really mean much!
Robots will change everything including architecture-- we saw this years ago when Bay Area real estate started to value longwise dimensions for automated cars to drop off employees and visitors and then the cars park somewhere else, taking away the need for the traditional commercial dimensions (1))
They will be hacked. If it's online, it can be hacked.
Further reading / Sources