Will Robots Take Over the World?

697 Words2 Pages

Since the beginning of the first robots, man has always considered the possibility of machines taking over the world. This prospect is being explored by Kevin Warwick at the University Readings in England and his research suggests that robots could take over the world. According to his current research, robots have been able to learn and think creatively, though not as creative as a human. The relationship we have with robots is a master-slave relationship but this unusual idea of robots taking over the world would only occur if we would allow robots to be equal to us in stature and respect. However, it seems highly unlikely that robots would ever rise to the position to take over the world for two reasons. Firstly, Warwick’s idea only seems a possibility if robots have free will, therefore if we limit their capabilities they should not be in a position to take over the world. Secondly, robots would never reach the status of power to take over the world as the human workforce would resist to losing their jobs to machines.

Robots in this century have limitations as to what they can do and it is believed that some of these limitations will be permanent. It is these limitations that hinder a robot’s ability to gain dominance over human beings. These limitations are explained by Daniel Wolpert (a Royal Research Society Professor in the Department of Engineering) in a Phys.Org article. He states that ‘there is no machine that can identify visual objects or speech with the reliability and flexibility of humans.’ Furthermore he goes on to compare this ability with creativity when he states ‘these abilities are precursors to any real intelligence such as the ability to reason creatively and invent problems.’ These insightful quotes sugg...

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Gips, J. (1998). Towards the Ethical Robot. Retrieved November 25, 2013, from andrew.cmu.edu: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/80-136/gips.html
The University of Reading. (n.d.). Professor Kevin Warwick. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from The University of Reading: http://www.kevinwarwick.com/index.asp
University of Cambridge. (2013, July 30). Will robots take over the world? Retrieved November 29, 2013, from PHYS.ORG: http://phys.org/news/2013-07-robots-world.html
Wikipedia. (2013, November 27). Kevin Warwick. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick
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