Are Robots Becoming More Human? Are robots becoming more human, that was a question which I wondered about. The second question was, are humans becoming more like machines? First, I think I will look at the robot question. When we read science fiction stories many are chuck full of robots with human abilities and some can’t even be distinguished from humans. They are called cyborgs. Could we really be headed that way? Science fiction has been able to predict our future many times. One has only to go back to the days of Jules Verne and his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. His depiction of a modern submarine was uncanny considering the story was written in 1870. Other predictions which were made and came true are those of space stations and sending rockets to other planets and even landing on the moon. When we look at how far robots have come it is amazing and yet they still have a long way to go. The first robots appeared far earlier than most would suspect. Many credit Hero of Alexandria with the first robot. He used robots which could be programed to complete work on their own. I am taking about a man which was born in 10 A.D. He is also credited with inventing the steam engine. His robots used were used to put on 10 minute plays and were programmed using ropes and knots. Falling weights provides the propulsion. As you can see the idea of robots probably has a much more ancient origin than you suspected. Once Hero died, no one took up where he left off for thousands of years although there were some ancient toys which appeared about a thousand years later or little more which were automatons. Di Vinci created a sort of robot out of a suit of armor and a mechanical lion which could walk on its own. When the industrial revolution came along some machines were invented which could perform tasks without human presence and these were the forerunners of today's robotics. For quite a while the idea of creating a robot was to use mechanics, but the invention of electrical circuits changed all that. While some of the parts are still mechanical, computers are at the heart of most if not all robots today. The first exhibit of a modern robot occurred in 1928 when W.H. Richards displayed his robot named Eric to the Society of Model Engineers in London. Today robots are everywhere. While they are still not up to the standards of the ones predicted in science fiction, they build our cars and some even assist in operations. The rovers on Mars and on the moon are robots. It is important to know a robot does not have to be in the shape of a human to be a robot. Today we have robot drones, ships, and many other devices, but I will discuss the robots modeled after us. The robot exoskeleton developed for the military has the general shape of legs and arms. The soldier steps inside and this device allows him to travel without fatigue and life heavy loads far beyond human capacity. The most astounding part of the exoskeleton is once it is taken off, it can function as another soldier in a battle. One big advance in robotics was the ability to program them. People had been using punch cards for hundreds of years to program looms so the idea was already out there. The development of human like skin for robots was a big step in making them look more like us. They weren’t able to fool anyone into think they were human because of the way they moved. They made sort of jerky movements. Scientist became busy trying to program emotions into their machines. They wanted us to think they were self-aware, and while this was just a mirage, it started to fool some people. One of the biggest breaks was the capability to converse with a human. This is a feature which is constantly being refined. You can test it out at home on some of the devices you have. One example of this was the robot named Robothespian. The first robot to look exactly like us was Nadine. Recently the optics in robots has been improved with a new invention which gives robots a similar field of vision as a human. Every increase in computing power means robots get more powerful in their abilities. Robots are on the expensive side now but this could change in the years ahead as components become cheaper. Think about how much cheaper computers and their devices have become. The first hard drives were tiny and cost $20,000 decades ago. Now you can buy way bigger ones for $49.00. There may come a time when a human looking robot which can perform all sorts of tasks around the home will only cost about the same as a car. This brings up the other question. Are we humans become more like robots. When there are traumatic injuries, some humans are fitted with prosthetics which are similar to what a robot might have. For example, a robot limb might be similar to a prosthetic one for a human. Some humans have placed tiny circuit boards under their skin so they could control things around the home or workplace. Others who have had paralyzing injuries are having circuits placed in them to help them to walk again. Then there are the helmet type devices which can sense what a person is thinking and control a computer so they can use it. One of the think being discussed is the insertion of a type of computer memory which would contain all the knowledge a person would need for the field he was in. This potentially would eliminate the current need to educate ourselves since we would be able to access the memory, anytime we wanted to know something. The memory does have a social problem. The elite will want to keep the best ones for themselves and give the ones out which are have more menial facts. This is just human nature. Another feature which is being talked about is inserting something into us which will allow us to read other’s thoughts. I believe this will be the worst thing ever done, if we do it. It will lead to thought arrests and who knows what else. It would probably not be given to everyone, except certain police agencies and maybe the rich and politicians. Lastly there has been talk about chipping all of us so we could all be tracked. Are we going to be more like robots in the future, probably?
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