“The fear of the unknown or of the painfully familiar?” – Alexandra Kinevskaya

There is a lot of argument these days when it comes to robots. This topic has become especially actively discussed in recent years, as AI and robotics are no longer in distant future. FESTO with a myriad of insect and animal robots that move just like their prototypes, Boston Dynamics’ with their series of robots that can lifts heavy things, run 45 miles per hours, jump and even move on a rough terrain and, of course, Hanson Robotics’ social humanoid Sophia with embedded AI and her own social network accounts.

Robots are generally seen as a complex machine with physical and processing capabilities bigger than those of humans, designed to help people. However, many people fear that robots have high chances of turning against their creators and harming us in the end. But the question here is – if we are the ones programming them, what are we afraid of?

One of the possible reasons for fear here is the way AI operates. It is programmed by people and eventually, it learns from people. This means that it analyses human behavior and often tends to imitate it. Unfortunately, humans are known to be cruel, angry and aggressive. And if robots operating on AI are to be created in our image, wouldn’t they eventually try to mirror those qualities as well? Is there a way to make them self-evolving and able to learn without ever ‘crossing the line’? In the end, we are not afraid of the unknown in robots. We are afraid of the same thing that we can’t seem to extinguish from humanity – hatred and rage. Only when it comes to robots, they will most probably possess more strength and would be harder to negotiate with if worse comes to worse. After all, we are afraid of what we would do to this world and to each other if we were stronger, faster, smarter and didn’t have any physical needs or could shut down our emotions. There are a lot of doomsday-themed films that paint that picture.

I believe, that while many people are indeed not completely familiar with the way AI works these days and how robots are made in general, there are things to be considered. Almost no invention in this world was created with evil intentions, it was a mere curiosity of restless scientists’ mind. However, technologies are often known to get away from its creator and turn into something threatening in the end. I am not trying to propose that we would fear developments in the fields of robotics. I believe, that one should at least educate oneself on the matter before making any judgements. I am merely suggesting, we take a good look at ourselves before fearing fictional menaces as humanoid robots are just created in our own image.