Thanks to Doug for the title

After much debate (largely headed by doug and myself) on the subject of robotics, I’ve decided to make a post about it, about my thoughts responding to it, and what I feel the major issues are. Some good background reading can be found on this site’s loving, nurturing parent site, OOKEE -- see both the practical application of robotics, and the resulting theoretical debate spurred by it (with a little help from a McLuhan-influenced blogger).

The questions aren’t new, nor are any of the answers seen here, but as evidenced by the military’s interest, it is no longer solely an academic (or fictional) question. I plan on going through in a more cohesive and organized fashion the arguments that I provided before (and getting rid of those messy parentheticals), so bear with me, as this will likely get lengthy and repetitive (quite a few pages of text after the jump). I’m going to begin by reversing the order of the debate, because I don’t see how one can talk about the practical use of robots before defining quite what we mean by them. I turn to the most recent aspects of discussion before explaining at length why I think this issue is worth debating, but to hook you let me say that I believe and will argue that robotics will be the field that militarism, politics, Marxism, sociology, philosophy, economics, science, and indeed fiction will combine in; it is impossible to understand the past and current development of robotics, as well as the future of it, without a grasp on each and every one of these fields. As such, I think it is the single most important isolatable issue to be debating, and one that will have the most impact on the world as it develops.

Terminology

First, tool. A tool, here, is something that is used by humans to perform a function in a way that either renders the normally impossible possible, or renders the possible easier, more cost-efficient, or safer. As noted back on OOKEE, this can extend from websites like Google to cranes that lift thousands of pounds; the important thing to remember, and the thing that makes this definition so vital, is that autopilot on a plane, programming languages, and modern/simple robotics are as much a tool as is a hammer or crowbar.

Next, robot. Robot may seem like the most important term here, and indeed it is in a way, but it is also the most vague and thus must be pinned down. A robot is a specific type of tool, one that rather than aiding a human completely replaces him or her. Dagon defines a robot as “a device [or] suite of devices that can replace a human being in a particular task. Thus, the ATM is a robot; it replaces the bank teller.” This definition will prove incredibly useful, although I would like to deviate from it, if only slightly. In his essay, there is a divide between robotics and prosthetics, and I would like to keep that divide although I won't go much into prosthetics here, other than to state that I am not interested in the question of cyborgs precisely because they are prosthetics; there is still an organically born human that was always inseparably a part of existing social structures and who has only been aided by devices - by prosthetics. The rest of this work will be focused on these machines that operate without direct human control. The divorce between a human operator and the device is crucial - even if physically removed, we cannot understand anything that is directly controlled by a human as a robot. In summation, what must be understood by the term robot is a device used to replace a human at any particular task without direct and constant intervention by a human. Thus something that is programmed by a human and then does its task is a robot, so long as it is programmed completely before it begins the task. Something whose actions can be changed by a human behind some form of controls is a prosthetic, and is not of interest to us in this essay.

I will use the term android frequently. An android is understood here to be a robot that may change or influence its own programming - something with true artificial intelligence. While this still technically operates in the realm of science fiction (at least, as far as I know), it is also not far off and is a project under development. An android is significant and deserves its own term because it is as close to sentient as a robot may be (and this may later be defined as wholly sentient) - an android has some degree of self-awareness, and may influence its actions in a way that no human directly instructed it to - even if this has parameters, the key is that an android in contrast to a non-android robot may change its actions as events change to some degree, whereas a non-android robot will always only do exactly what it has been programmed to, unless something absolutely prevents it from doing so, in which case it will still attempt to do what it was programmed to, although it may fail. There is a fuzzy line that remains to be clarified - and for a moment I must borrow an example from the world of video games, one of the first mass-marketed examples of artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence here is (from my limited understanding) a series of conditioned programs - the program that runs enemy AI will analyze the terrain, proximity of other allies, other enemies, and the player, and run a certain script based on this information. Its complexity may vary, but this will always already be a non-android robotic maneuver - despite changing in response to situation, it is still only doing what it was told to do in a certain situation; once an exploit is found in the script, it will work every time such that if an enemy acts a certain way in a certain situation and a player finds a way to exploit that and easily defeat the enemy, the enemy will not learn from its mistake, rather it will make the same mistake every time. It cannot learn. I wish to hesitantly posit learning as the mark of sentience; it is through learning that a self-aware but helpless being can overcome the limitations of its conditioned existence, and be not only self-aware but self-defining. I say hesitant because it seems somewhat of an advanced function to be the defining factor, but I can’t think of another one that would definitively place the barrier of sentience where I feel it is most relevant to this discussion.

Although it is the intention to place androids as sentient and thus a sub-category of this next definition, the definition is important as is its relation to android. This term is human. I will mean many things when I say human - I will try to define it whenever I use it, but a general definition will only help us. Human, that is the basic definition before any specifics, is any of the species that you and I belong to. Homo Sapiens is the scientific name, and I am not even a little interested in that, because the human what I wish to discuss is a social construct. The borders of the human are intentionally blurry as a result - and so must they be in discussing the ethics of robotics. Why this is will become apparent.

The Evolution of Robots

Human evolution is not under any serious debate by anyone whose opinions I feel like giving any respect to. That aside, robotic evolution is still underway, and I will project speculations about it that I will base much of my argument on. I feel, however, that this is a logical projection. Tools evolved as extensions of human capabilities, and are repeatedly evolving, and I’m talking less and less about the invention of the wheel (although the significance of this can not be underestimated), and more and more about the constant invention of the minor tools that serve the purpose of making us do things that we wish to do but can’t - for me, the prime example is the backscratcher, which began as any long and roughly straight object with which one could scratch his or her back in places that his or her arm wasn’t long or flexible enough to reach, and is now a commodity sold in so many different materials, shapes, sizes, and colors as to be dizzying. Tools did not evolve into robots and fade away, of course not; the monkey exists alongside the human; so, too, does the stick exist alongside the $29.99 plastic hand at the end of a stick available at these fine retailers. The evolution has also produced a direct evolutionary offspring in robots, as well as hybrids and all sorts of missing links the kind of which Pacific Northwesterners only dream of. This evolution like any evolution is not streamlined, and it is even more jagged as a result of capitalism, which both rewards heavily the evolution of some incredibly favorable trait in its eyes, and rewards the persistence of old favorites, which is why so many varieties of the backscratcher are still sold right along massaging chairs and other robots with similar aims. Still, this evolution one day yielded tools that were more than just extensions - they were self-sufficient machines. They were robots.

The phone was one of the most revolutionary tools to be invented. It made instantaneous conversation possible over great distances without some specialized code; anyone with the tool could talk to anyone else with the tool easily. Cell phones were part of the natural evolution of this tool. They took the same basic idea, and made it possible to use it without being grounded to a specific location. Another, even earlier evolution, however, introduced robotics to the telephone. They’ve manifested themselves in several forms; the easiest to think of is the auto-dialer, which will call a series of numbers and play a pre-recorded message to them. No longer was a person even necessary to operate the device; every part of one end of the conversation could be handled without human intervention. It was limited, of course; one couldn’t hold a true conversation - one only heard a pre-recorded message. However, the phone would soon see an even more complex robot - the phone menu, perhaps most popularized (and satirized) in the form of the “Moviefone Guy.” This robot replaced a whole series of functions; it was at once ticket-taker, marquis, and phone operator. Likewise, the car, that classic human invention, has had its evolution in traditional form, but robotics have accompanied it, especially recently. GPS systems are robots that replace navigators. Crash test dummies (remember, they entirely replace a human for a specific function) are early robots whose function is to determine the outcome of car accidents. There are now large suites of optional on-board systems that can replace any element of the diagnostics, navigation, and technical aspects of driving - roles that would otherwise be filled by a human. These are robots.

Towards a Political Understanding of Modern Robotics

“Science-fiction writing today presents situations that enable us to perceive the potential of new technologies. Formerly, the problem was to invent new forms of labor-saving. Today, the reverse is the problem. Now we have to adjust, not to invent. We have to find the environments in which it will be possible to live with our new inventions. Big Business has learned to tap the s-f writer” (Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, 124). Money and time were saved by the invention many modern robots. I would like to say right now that, unlike the evolution of humanity (although my opponents will disagree), the current evolution of robotics is absolutely predicated on capitalism. The incentives for decreasing cost and increasing profits make replacing labor desirable, and the constant strive for efficiency and increased productivity makes replacing people with machines the best option a capitalist can hope for. The ethics of this aren’t questioned by capitalism because it’s ‘progress.’ This is not to say that there would be no robotics without capitalism - but (say, for the sake of argument) under socialism, robots would evolve to do dangerous and undesirable jobs; without a focus on selling labor to stay alive, robots could do these jobs and workers could lead fulfilling lives. Being replaced by a robot would not be a threat, because robots wouldn’t replace humans for economic reasons, but for safety and quality-of-life reasons. The evolution of robotics could disarm one of the strongest objections to socialism - in a society where work opportunity isn’t based on economic stratification, no one will want to do the tedious and menial or dangerous jobs - but instead it is being used to replace workers in factories, service industries, and other sectors where costs can be cut, costing workers their livelihoods while saving capitalists money. As McLuhan states, it is not a problem of the technology itself, but its effects. We must find the context, the environment, in which robotics can be used to positive effect, because they certainly have that potential. Robotics is a new medium, and the capitalism that developed out of the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not the environment that robotics works under. Mine is not a Luddite perspective; I am worried about the applications of modern technology on outdated and poor systems, as will become clear later, and not modern technology or progress themselves.

Regardless of all of that, (although I don’t want to discount it), we have arrived at the invention of robotics. There is no date, no specific invention to point out here; it was the natural procession of the evolution of tools. Suffice it to say that devices and suites of devices began to appear and still appear in an ever-increasing array of forms that can replace humans for several tasks. This about brings us up to speed; robots are huge parts of our lives, from Google or Ookee (or AIM, for that matter), which led you here, to the processor inside the computer that you’re sitting in front of, to the robot you spoke to on the phone this morning. Androids are mostly still science fiction, but perhaps not as speculative as they once seemed. Work in robotics seems focused on moving in an android-like direction (although they perhaps do not use the same term I do, the point is the same). Not all of my concerns are with android-and-beyond robotics, however. There are some very real concerns right here with robotics and its continuing evolution, perhaps most topically in terms of the military.

There is an overarching project here, and it is what I will spend most of the time discussing, but I thought I’d inject the specifics I have now to establish the seriousness of this topic, as well as why it’s about more than a more efficient way to kill - as if that weren’t enough to be worried. Indicative of this is Israel’s Trophy system, essentially a makeshift force-field comprised of a computer and a gun. I don’t want to launch the Israeli/Palestinian debate here, although I must quickly say that this technology does have special significance because this is the specific conflict that it is being used in. Whether or not you agree with the specifics of the Palestinian movement, the reason I highlight it here is that it is a group of under-funded militias taking on a well-funded and huge military power, and even if you don’t agree that the Palestinians should be fighting this battle, you absolutely must understand that as long as there is nationalist conflict and imperialist oppression (in my reading, that is as long as there is capitalism), there will be resistance movements similar in some way to those in Palestine right now, and that even if not in this case then in some cases that fight is just. Give the already-superior fighting force an impenetrable shield, and no resistance movement will ever stand a chance again. Imagine the worst possible foreign fighting force (whatever that may be for you) getting a hold of this technology, and taking over your town with it. You’ve got no way to stop it now, not even if you beat the odds and get your hands on some form of weapon. Introducing robotics into the battlefield is always already inviting the worst wielders of it to become that much closer to unstoppable. America has interest in a similar project, as noted in the Wikipedia link above, and even if it doesn’t become operational until 2012, it is yet another nail in the coffin of any other option than devastating World War as the end to American hegemony.

Likewise, the American military is pursuing the use of robotic fighting forces, something I discussed at length in my first comment on this subject back on OOKEE.com. I must dip into speculation here, because it has not moved beyond testing, at least not in its declassified stage, but the basic issue is that of unmanned combat forces. We’re no longer talking about replacing one function of soldiers on a battlefield with a robot, the way that TROPHY does. We are talking about replacing soldiers on a battlefield. Specifically, replacing soldiers on one side of a battlefield. As long as war is hegemonic, liberal-nationalist (Iraq War model of exporting democracy through the barrel of a gun), or imperialistic in nature, and post-Cold War wars almost certainly will be until either another superpower emerges, World War Three begins, or least likely but most appealing, worldwide socialism destroys the capitalist, imperialist machines of war that create this debate, one power will have vast military superiority over another, at least in the traditional sense, and the wars will take on the “insurgency” model. The superpower, which we can state here is the United States, will be the one to yield the robotic army; their opponents will be comprised of militias, revolutionaries, insurgents, freedom fighters, yes terrorists, and nationalists. Their opponents will be human. A robotic army is likely to be comprised of reinforced metallic men and vehicles with guns; few if any militias and insurgents could hope to topple such an army. Not only this, but in a war of robots versus humans, the costs on one side will be human lives and the other side will be economic. One side will pay more readily than the other, and the deaths will continue to mount, unabated. Picture the American Revolution, only replace the Redcoats with robots. Our money would be a lot more colorful and coin-based. This is the essential argument against a robotic fighting force on one side, although there are many. Another significant one that I will bring up here is the concept of soldiers’ consciences; at some point, even though it is strictly forbidden, a soldier may question why he is shooting at someone he has never met, talked to, or heard of. At some point a soldier may decide that his enemy is not the man he has never met, but the man that he has met who is telling him that it is just for the soldier to die so long as the politician makes more money and power. A robot will not ask that question (an android will, but we’ll get to that soon).

“It is no longer convenient, or suitable, to use the latest technologies for fighting our wars, because the latest technologies have rendered war meaningless” (McLuhan, 138). This brings to bear my final point on the use of robotics in war. All of the points made in the above paragraph are assuming that only one side is using robotics for war. In understanding a conflict where both sides are using robotics, McLuhan’s analysis becomes much more relevant. War is an outdated form, but as it requires two players it can still function if one of the sides is still adhering to the old model. War operates on cost. Essentially, war functions by making the cost of continued struggle so great for once side that it is no longer bearable. Traditionally, this has been understood to take place in three realms: land to hold on to, soldiers alive, and cost of the war. Always the most significant of these costs was soldiers’ lives. Introduce robotic armies and this cost disappears. McLuhan might argue that this eliminates war’s meaning; I agree in principle, but I would not go that far (to be fair, McLuhan is here taken out of context - hence the conditional; he talks specifically of the atom bomb, which serves to instead increase the human cost to an always already unbearable point and thus end war by making war impossibly costly. His words were just too potent and well-stated to ignore, and seemed relevant here even if not in his specific reading of them). Causes for wars are still going to exist, and economic and geographic costs in war are still going to exist as well. War takes on a fundamentally different shape at this point - it truly is more of a game - but a very expensive and at times devastating game nonetheless. Without the key feature that makes both popular opposition to a war possible and makes withdrawal from a war necessary, war can truly be eternal - meaning that the war machine can chug on forever. What you have then is perhaps a warped Orwellian sense of war as peace; the eternal production of robots keeps the working classes busy and exploitable, the cost of the robots helps maintain the stratification of the classes and creates scarcity, and there is no actual threat of war, because war is thus a costly game, one that serves the interests in fact of the ruling classes. All-out robotic war is a hard capitalist’s dream, not because it ends needless killing (the admittedly positive benefit here), but because it allows for an eternal drive for the capitalist means of production. Lenin argued that imperialism is the highest form of capitalism; I might posit in his place that a robotic imperialism would be the highest form of capitalism, serving to swell to breaking the robotics industry, what would certainly become the investment pet of the future bourgeois. While obviously this would be far in the future were it to happen, and I think before this happened the working class might achieve some kind of consciousness of it (at which point the question of how far advanced the military industrial complex is towards this end must be asked to determine the chance of success of the working class), it is my very real fear of the dangers of transforming war into a robotic affair. Before that though are the concerns addressed in the previous paragraph, about war looks like when only one side approaches it from this much of a technologically superior perspective.

The Future - From Robotics to Androids

I have reached the point at which this discussion can no longer truly take place in the present tense, because the development of robotics has only gone so far (and, I might add, I hope it goes no farther). The question that remains the future of mainstream robotics (and here I am less interested in the military) is that of androids, termed whatever they are by their producers. Much work is being done in the realm of artificial intelligence already. Engineers, especially in computer and electronic fields, are making rapid advances; a car driven fully by artificial intelligence could barely go 7 miles one year; the next year, three cars in the competition went the full 25 (I admit, my only basis for this is a second-hand recounting of the event, but the source is reliable). If this pattern continues, the inevitable result will be to combine it with the work being done in robotics.. For this reason, I absolutely must stress that artificial intelligence research is fundamentally an obstacle to a positive progression of society. Its only role is to infuse things that are not sentient with sentience, and this as I will show can only lead to bad things. As I asserted in the first section of this work, I believe that the differentiation that must be made here is the ability to learn and react; any machine entirely dependent on programming is robotic and currently feasible, even if it specifically does not exist. As McLuhan might state, robotics is a medium of the present, and the specific contents of it I am not concerned with. Likewise, androids are likely a medium of the future that may evolve out of robotics, and it is this medium itself that I wish to comment on.

“Under conditions of electric circuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and ‘human’ service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty” (McLuhan, 20). For McLuhan, the result of this was the return to the ‘global village,‘ where work represented something fundamentally different than it was going to. Yet again, I plan to use McLuhan’s words and not the point that he drew from them; as the cycle goes, so from resorting back to learning and teaching jobs people went with robotics in place, so too will robots begin to learn and teach. At this point they will become something wholly different: adding learning, specifically, to the capabilities of a robot makes it possible for said robot to be self-aware, self-changing, and ultimately self-acting - in another word, sentient.

I want to make it clear that my concern with this has nothing to do with the ‘playing God’ aspect that might be perceived here; not only because I don’t believe in God, but because I think that the issues that are here don’t have so much to do with the right to do so as the implications that will likely follow from it - specifically based on the conditions in which it would be created it. Under socialism, you have no motivation for it; under capitalism, the motivation for it only makes worse the worst parts about capitalism. Robots, particularly in a capitalist society, are cheap labor that is even more exploitable than the working class; create learning, conscious androids and all of a sudden that group is going to feel the exploitation just as the working class did before it. Couple it with the fact that a learning and analytical android would be capable of determining the disadvantages of its situation and might one day posit that this other species, humans, which has created it for the purposes of exploitation, is an enemy and is unnecessary. At this point, Terminator isn’t a funny-but-ridiculous sci-fi movie. It’s a cautionary tale. I cannot say that androids lead inevitably to this; I can only say that it is a danger not worth facing, and yet the development of the kind of artificial intelligence which would render this sort of situation possible seems to be the goal of modern engineering.

Unfortunately, there is no brighter side here. What happens if I’m wrong, artificial intelligence goes off without a hitch, and androids are perfectly content in their subservient role (or even less likely, they’re not placed in a subservient role)? More of the same.. A technology has been created for which the only use is to replace humans. Combine that with overpopulation and you’ve got rising unemployment and a widening gap between the rich and the poor even more so as androids find their own niche in society as almost assuredly more skilled workers than any human in the working class could hope to be. At best, you’ve got an overly class-conscious working class which now has to fight robot scabs as well as bourgeois oppressors; at worst, you’ve got absolutely nothing. While I think this whole scenario is unlikely, because I’m pretty sure I’m right if you have androids being subservient but sentient, you’re going to contend with a robotic revolution at some point. These androids must find a new place for themselves in our society, and it will be at the cost of people already in that society. This cannot possibly be for the greater good, and so androids must never become a reality.

Conclusion

Tools have existed since barely-recorded prehistory. Their evolution has eventually given us robots, which can replace humans in some fashion. Humanity has always had a user-item relationship with tools and robots, such that the human is the agent and the tool or robot is merely an instrument. However, androids become the merging of the human and the tool or robot; androids combine user and item, and indeed replace user. The result of this cannot be good for humanity.

What can be drawn from this work is an understanding of how the system works and how robotics, within the system, are progressing in what I believe is a negative fashion. Capitalism seeks to increase profits, a task it does by reducing the cost of labor and increasing efficiency. Robots, as tools that can replace and extend the capabilities of the average human worker, are perfect for the system; they require no cost other than the initial, because wages are not required to allow them to stay alive. If (imperialist) war is to be understood as the highest form of capitalism (a point taken from Lenin, which I will not try to argue here, but the essence of which is that imperialism spreads market dominance and increases sources of free/cheap revenue and resources), then this works even further, as robots can be applied not only at home in work but on the battlefield in a completely new and more effective kind of war which changes the effects of war both abroad and at home. Robots might exist under different systems, but they would exist wholly differently; under socialism, robots would do the things that humans couldn’t or didn’t want to do, as opposed to the things that humans do to stay alive. Because robots have evolved under capitalism, their evolution will continue to be shaped by it so long as the system exists; the next form of this seems to be, drawing from science fiction as well as actual research, something like what I have termed an android which will become a new sentient being, and pose whole new problems for humanity, class relations, and the view of robots as tools. Any implication of the invention of androids can only be understood as harmful to humanity, progress, capitalism, or socialism.