Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
researchers in fields such as robotics and nanotechnology, the percep-
tion amongst the talented researchers in these fields is that it is almost
impossible to forgo military support and still remain competitive. Al-
though there is a reaction by some researchers who snub financing from
the military, to quote Illah Nourbakhsh, one of the leading roboticists at
Carnegie Mellon University, “there are so many more people in robotics
who do take the money.”
A similar dilemma faced nuclear physicists on the U.S. atomic weap-
ons program immediately after the bombs were dropped on Nagasaki
and Hiroshima, but in time most of those who left the project drifted
back. The director of the project, General Leslie Groves, later remarked
What happened is what I expected, that after they had this extreme
freedom for about six months their feet began to itch, and as you
know, almost every one of them has come back into government
research, because it was just too exciting. [16]
It is much the same today, with young science and technology researchers
in the U.S.A. feeling compelled to accept funding controlled by the Pen-
tagon, because no one else has the resources to bring their exciting futur-
istic visions to life.
It is not only in the area of creating physical damage to humans, even
killing them, that robots can be a danger to the human race. Robots
can induce emotion in humans so there are clearly some ethical issues
to consider relating to robots that induce long-term or short-term emo-
tional changes in people. The benefits of that technology will be enor-
mous. Psychopaths, schizophrenics, pathological criminals,...allmight
be curable thanks to the psychiatrist robots of the future, doubtless armed
with drugs that the robots have themselves designed and manufactured,
sometimes on a case-by-case basis. But what if we turn this technol-
ogy about face? Pleasant, normal people might be adversely changed by
inducements and drugs administered by robots. Given such concerns,
it is natural to ask who will take the ultimate responsibility for techno-
logical developments in robotics—commercial interests, governments or
academic institutions? If the answer is commercial interests we are much
more likely to see “bad” robots designed with only the bottom line of the
annual accounts in mind. If the answer is government, which countries'
governments would
you
trust with such a great responsibility? And if it
is to be the universities, in whose hands will lie the control and how will
they be able to exercise that control effectively?
