We need to think about the kind of humanity we want our robots to show.
It is traditional in the annual Victoria Students’ Psychology Society Great Debate to find ways to pretend to have misunderstood the moot. As a member of the debating team arguing in support of the topic, “I, for one, welcome our robot overlords”, I professed initial confusion, claiming to have heard, “I, for one, welcome our rubber over-drawers”.
The real moot of the debate is a riff on a line attributed to the rather awful movie based on HG Wells’ short story Empire of the Ants. The line, however, doesn’t mention robots, but instead insect overlords.
I, for one, suspect that the embryos of our robot overlords are already with us. Victoria research methods lecturer Matt Hammond suggests that they are housed in our smartphones in the form of supercomputers. We take them everywhere, sharing experiences such as concerts and sunsets with them, all the while thinking we’re just using them to take photos and videos.
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