As robots enter deeper into human territory, new questions crop up.
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- The story: Global e-tail firm Amazon unveiled its ‘Astro’ home robot, designed to help customers with a range of tasks like home monitoring and keeping in touch with family. It comes with serious privacy concerns, due to 24×7 inbuilt surveillance.
- Astro Robot: It is designed to be a home security device, and to move around the home and keep a check on pets, and detect something unusual in the absence of the owner.
- It comes with a “periscope” camera that pops up from its head and can be used to keep an eye on the home. As a combination of the Echo Show (smart speaker) and sophisticated Ring security camera integrated into one single device, it captures live videos, recognises faces, plays music or videos, and delivers a beer across the home.
- It can recognise the faces of people and analyse them until it figures out if it’s a family member or an outsider.
- Privacy concerns: Rights activitis worry that the amount of data Amazon gets to fetch with the Astro, giving the company easy access to the household. This is going one step beyond Alexa which had access to vocals and sound until now. Amazon asserted that Astro stores face data locally rather than in the cloud, but it is still a privacy concern as with any internet-connected device. There are concerns of stealing or hacking of the device. Due to this, the perpetrator can get access to the digital map that the robot creates of someone’s home. This can contribute to greater public acceptance of Artificial Intelligence-powered surveillance. In the past, hackers have managed to access Ring cameras, used in the devices of Amazon technologies.
- More such experiments: Softbank in 2021 “suspended” the production of Pepper, one of the first humanoid robots able to “read” emotions. Jibo has started an Indiegogo project, which aims to build a world’s first social robot for the home.
- Robotics: It is a branch of engineering that involves the conception, design, manufacture and operation of robots. A "Robot" is any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort. The objective of the robotics field is to create intelligent machines that can assist humans in a variety of ways. In many situations robots can increase productivity, efficiency, quality and consistency of products. They can work in environments which are unsafe for humans as they don’t have the same environmental requirements that humans do – such as lighting, air conditioning or noise protection. Robots have some sensors/actuators which are more capable than humans. Unlike humans, robots don’t get bored. Until they wear out, they can do the same thing again and again.
- The use of robots can create economic problems if they replace human jobs. Robots can only do what they are told to do – they can’t improvise. Although robots can be superior to humans in some ways, they are less dexterous than humans. Robotics lack emotional intelligence, which plays a critical role in intense situations. Often these are very costly – in terms of the initial cost, maintenance, the need for extra components and the need to be programmed to do the task. Surveillance concerns pose a problem of entering a privacy nightmare.
- Asimov's laws of robotics - Science writer Issac Asimov proposed the Three Laws of Robotics - (i) A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (ii) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (iii) A robot must protect its own existence so long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. Asimov's idea was that these rules be so deeply embedded into the "brain" of every robot made, that if a robot were to break one of the rules, its circuitry would actually be physically damaged beyond repair.
- A safety check - The importance of Asimov's laws is clear, nonetheless. A slightly deranged computer that is mentally more powerful than a human could create an even more powerful and deranged computer much faster than humans could create something in defense. By implementing Asimov's laws, a deranged computer couldn't exist. And a "good" computer would only create other, better, "good" computers.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the laws of robotics as given by Isaac Asimov. Are they useful? (2) It seems that people are willing to sacrifice their privacy and allow corporate robots to enter their private spaces. Do you agree? Explain.
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