Dylan Madden. Dr. Brian Henderson. English 201. 16 March
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Dylan Madden
Dr. Brian Henderson
English 201
16 March 2017
Robopocolypse: Are Robots peaceful or harmful?
I. Introduction
Noel Sharkey has warned us that “the widespread availability of service robots has resulted from several developments that allowed robots to become mobile, interactive machines” (Sharkey 358). Robots have become a necessity for people today rather than just for science fiction or manufacturing processes, but lately we wonder whether or not if it’s safe to put our faith in the hands of cold machinery. Today, robots have been known to provide care for our children and the perhaps even the elderly. They even provide service to our men in combat. However, it doesn’t change the fact that there are those who feel…show more content… 2.1: Caring for Children?
Sharkey explains the advantage points of his argument by explaining how the Japanese and South Korean companies are creating child-like robots that can be good for “video-game playing, conducting verbal quiz game, speech recognition, face recognition, and conversation” (Sharkey 358). He describes how robots have the ability to provide alerts when children move out of range. However, he brings up a crucial point in their programming on how robots can’t provide the proper care that human adults can give to their kids including: contact, touch and caring from other humans. Though robots can provide safety, children may not have contact with other humans for days, which according to Sharkey, can cause a “psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation” (358). His claim was based on animal studies. For example, during an experiment with monkeys, according to Sharkey, “severe social dysfunction occurs in infant animals that are allowed to develop attachments only to inanimate surrogates” (358). Like a child would do with a robot, the monkeys would grow too attached and their behavior would likely change. People today need to realize that they need to reconsider the idea of having robots care for their kids and start being the responsible ones.
2.2: Caring for Elderly?
To provide his argument on whether or not to entrust robots with the elderly, Sharkey uses examples of robots like this, Secom, an automatic