Robots Can Act and Relate to Humans: Are We Ready?

In previous classes, we've mentioned about the advanced technology and how robots are slowly taking over the market, replacing us humans as workers. I came across an article over the weekend that talked about a company in mainland China, Foxconn, who was going to replace some of its workers with 1 million robots over the next three years. Terry Gou, the founder and chairman of the company said that the robots would "be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers".  

It's quite interesting that such things are happening NOW. They new issue of National Geographic has a special on robots and how they're being made to act and relate to humans. Physical traits weren't the only thing attributed to the robots, it also included human attitudes and social mannerism.The issue shows images of robots, many of the human-like robots were just the head. You can't help but ask, how many human characteristics and human function do we want to outsource to robots? In a way, it's incredible that we've been able to accomplish such great achievements, especially scientific and technological achievements. It's also scary too. Who knows, maybe ten years from now, we'll have robots among us everyday, doing every day things like humans do. Will humans then become the minority? We'll see. But hopefully I won't. 

(Above) Nick Mayer, of the LifeNaut project in Vermont, sits down for a chat with the robotic head Bina48. Hanson Robotics created the talkative humanoid in the image of Bina Rothblatt, the co-founder of LifeNaut, which is exploring robot-human fusion as a technological path to immortality.


Source: Making Robots Human: National Geographic Probes Robots that Act, Look like us