An alternative title for this blog may be “Chinese don’t read Asimov”. Why do I say this, I hear you ask? Well, seems obvious to me. Read on…
When I was a young Fish, swimming happily at the school, I got hooked for a while on Isaac Asimov and his storehouse of novels about the use of Robots in the future. Forget the irredeemable Will Smith’s movie – what a load of tosh – but the books were great.
Do I need to go on? A quick reminder perhaps?
Asimov wrote an amazing total of 37 science fiction short stories and a whole six novels, all centred around the development and use of sentient positronic robots remaining here on earth or sent into space in place of us fragile human beings. That’s a lot of words and thoughts about Robots – I think it is fair to say that he really ironed out the bugs in the programming of the Robotic positronic brain. Written between 1940 !!! and 1995, Asimov wrote I, Robot in 1950 and all these novels and short stories share some common dream lines and rules, known to all Sci-Fi readers as The Three Laws of Robotics.
The Three Laws, presented to be from the (fictional?) “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, are written thus:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
These are so influential to many Sci-Fi writers and others – they have even influenced the so-called “ethics” of AI – although seemingly not very well so far. Just a quick reminder – if this is from the 56th Edition of the Handbook of Robotics in 2058, that is only 32 years in the future from now – and so we must already be working from an earlier edition. Here’s an image from a recent fashion show / horror show, with some deluded lady dressed as Cruella D’Ville taking two robotic doggos for a walk dressed in frilly dog dresses. I would remind her that perhaps real dogs would not put up with that shit…
In later years, Wikipedia tells me, Asimov added a 4th law saying: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Hmmm. Fat lot of luck getting that one to stick buddy! Asimov attributed these laws and their exploration to a character in his books, Dr Susan Calvin, who explores the good and the bad points of her line of robots throughout the novels. But humanity seems intent on killing off all of us long before we get there, by rewarding us with an idiot President of the Earth, a vile Arch Enemy of the Earth, and a knob-like Prime Mincer of Paradise.
The actual term “Robot” came about from a Czech guy called Karel Capek, an anti-fascist, anti-communist, science fiction writer, publishing R.U.R. or Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1920. The word comes from a Czech word robotnik (forced worker, ie slave), which seems prescient given what we ask them to do these days. Here’s a War Dog, carrying bombs / ammo / spare khaki underpants into war. What is more embarrassing to the Robo Dog – dressed up as a tart / bitch or being a slogging packhorse?
And hence to the point of the first sentence of this blog post. Have you seen what is happening out there in Robot Land?
For years Robots have been our poor hapless slaves: welding car doors, building Teslas, assembling televisions, running into burning buildings on four dog-like legs, sent into battle in servitude to humankind, vacuuming the floor, cleaning up the planet after our presumed demise (Wall-E), but it is only recently that we have seen a young upstart Chinese company unleash upon our screens robots that can run faster than us, do synchronised acrobatics better than us, coherently back-flip and front flip, somersault and more. Round-house kung-fu kick even?
What I find rather incredulous is that gormless hordes of teenage boys (mainly) stand around and take photos of these flipping robots. I mean, this picture above is of one Robo-fighter doing a flying kick (and nearly connecting) to the head of a fellow Robot.
Yes, they were pretty crap fighters, putting in a solid performance of being “punch drunk” ie hit in the head so often that they could not longer tell where their opposing fighter was standing. But it is truly sad. Pretty sad pathetic audience as well. Truly these are nerds without any redeeming features of personality. Hmmmm. No doubt live streaming to their Insta-mates. What is worse – robots kicking each other to death or humans doing the same in MMA goon squads? May I remind you of the giant orange cheesecake putting this on the front lawn of the White House to “celebrate America’s 250th birthday” ? Or to preside over its rapid demise in year 251 ?
Is he going to demolish the actual White House next? Or just put the whole building in a gold lame bikini and spray-tan the whole damn administration with tanning butter?
I have, of course, had some interactions with Robots myself recently. Here’s the back and the front of a happy little chappy in a chinese dinner place over in Oz – happily running orders of dumplings to customers and then carrying away their plates after dinner.
And here is a floor cleaning robot in a Walmart somewhere in the USA – poor overworked machine, just like the people behind the tills there.
Always give robots two “eyes” it seems, and possibly a mouth. Why? You may ask… And I will leave you with two remaining robots, one (from over a decade ago) of a damn sexy robot-playing ping-pong player (ooh-err!) and then one of a purpose-built sexy robot that is so real we can’t quite tell if it is human or not, but we know we can probably pinch and poke her and get away with it.
What will our future be, as human beings? Are they our robot overlords, or just dumb automatons playing table tennis? Will we rule them, or will they rule us? Who will fight our future wars for us? Robots? Slaves? American GIs? Ukranian drones with bmbs? What is our robotic future going to be? Will our robots be imbued with morals? Rules? Laws? or just soap-suds and spermicides?
