Boyé Lafayette De Mente
Recent technological advances by Japanese scientists in robotics brings to mind the movie “The Rise of the Machines”—one of the Terminator classics starring now California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger....advances that pose a serious question.
Will the new robots now coming online—and the incredible ones that are on the immediate horizon—be a boon to mankind (as the scientists claim) or will they evolve into a new order of intelligence that becomes self-aware (as in the movie “I, Robot”) and themselves decide on what the human-robot relationship should be?
Japanese scientists, who continue to make one break-through after the other in programming robots to feel, hear, see and think like human beings, maintain that their goals are to create robots that will be able to act as assistants, caretakers and nurses for Japan’s rapidly aging population.
That sounds both benign and worthy of pursuing, especially since the elderly are expected to make up 40 percent of Japan’s population by 2055—with similar demographic changes in other countries as higher living standards and better education results in a decline in births and longer life-spans.
Scientists in Japan are now engaged in creating the technology for a range of robots that includes caretakers, general servants, technicians and engineers. Technology already developed and being used includes most of the eye, hear, arm and leg functions that distinguish human beings.
The latest advances in robotics involves placing incredibly sensitive sensors all over the bodies of robots that emulate the tactile response of human skin—a development that has far-reaching and profound implications. The bodies (and fingers) of this new order of robots are just as sensitive as human bodies.
This growing effort to humanize robots is being spearheaded by a combination of government and private industry sponsorship under the heading of an organization called the Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative (IRT), which is aimed at fusing information technology and robot technology. In other words, the goal is to provide robots with human-like skills and brains.
Project teams are well into applying new control systems developed by such companies as Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. To avoid making the robots look like humans, and therefore a possible threat, these teams are coming up with forms based on the work the robots are designed to perform.
Their public rationale is that a robot designed to do mechanical repairs on a washing machine, for example, does not have to look like “Mr. Maytag;” a robot that prepares and serves meals would not necessarily have to look like a chef. But people would surely be more comfortable if it did, and it is this human emotion that will no doubt determine the appearance of most future “domestic” and “service” robots!
The efforts of the IRT are being directed by Isao Shimoyama, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who says his goal is to create a class of robots that will be integrated into human society on the level that machines, electrical appliances and electronic devices now play.
The several million people who visited the Expo of 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture got a glimpse of the robotic world of the future, but the walking and talking robots that were introduced at that exhibition pale when it comes to the generation of robots that will go into the first stages of production in 2009.
The time has come when the Laws of Robots devised by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1940 should be dusted off and turned into non-fiction laws worldwide. In summary, these laws state that under no circumstances can a robot harm a human being…and they would at least set standards that scientists should follow.
In the meantime, we are getting a preview of the future!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info
