Robotic technologies are becoming increasingly complex. New products are being built to model human actions and decision making processes. The goal of the developers of these products is typically either to simplify/make easier everyday tasks or complexities, or to enable breakthroughs in previously unexplored arenas. These ‘robotic like’ technologies have the potential to be of great benefit to consumers and society alike. Devices exist today which enable cars to navigate traffic with lower probability of accident, planes to land with greater accuracy, Robotic soldiers to navigate and clear a field of landmines. These products are being designed to mimic our own actions and behaviours. However, these devices, don’t, and may never, have the ability to think with the full breadth or depth of human capacity. A plane with built in landing software may face a scenario in which a car pulls onto the runway at the last second, and the plane can either plow through the car killing the people in it with certainty or dodge the car and risk a bigger crash and the lives of the passengers. The same scenario may occur with a built in steering installed in a car. If these complexities cannot be addressed in the makeup of the technology, is robotics a desirable solution? Are the designers responsible for the potential dangers inherent in the technology? A simple analysis would suggest that if the combined utility of the convenience created plus the net value of the expected number of lives lost minus expected number of lives saved is positive, then the technology should be adopted but we know from experience that these numbers are next to unquantifiable and that the issue is much more complex. It is the responsibility of designers and users of these new technologies to analyze the risks regardless of whether government regulations have been put in place to regulate these new technologies.
Works Cited
The Economist “Morals and the Machine,” June 2nd, 2013
http://www.economist.com/node/21556234?zid=291&ah=906e69ad01d2ee51960100b7fa502595