Imminent Robot uprising!!

So recently a Canadian chatty and social media savvy robot, HitchBot, completed its 6000 Km journey across Canada and tweeted “I need to recharge, hitchhiking is tough”. Made using pool noodles, an old beer cooler bucket, Wellington boots, rubber gloves, solar panels and a computerized brain, this project aims at understanding human-robot interactions. This fascinating beer cooler turned hitchhiking robot met hundreds of people on its journey, attended a wedding, partied in Golden B.C., visited a powwow and met world famous albino groundhog, something which only humans intend to add to their wish list.

During our schooldays, we were not allowed use of calculator, even for higher mathematics and today kids even in grade 8th are using calculators to perform simple calculations. This is a very small example of how human dependency has elevated on machines. Focus on where to achieve not how to achieve is the mantra today. Programming Christmas lights during holidays so as to avoid the hassle of switching on the lights every day has become a chore in every neighborhood. Washing your car at automatic washing centers, an auto-pilot in an airplane, sophisticate burglary alarm, driver less trains and GPS are necessary robots alive in our daily lives.

At University of Toronto, Prof Goldie Nejat has come up with a unique idea of adding helping hand for long term care facilities. Two robots named Tangy and Casper will help health care providers with simple and repetitive tasks to make lives of senior citizens more comfortable. Gradually this technology can be used in homes as well. This reminds me of movie Bicentennial Man where an android wanted to be human, showing all possible humanly emotions. So imagine if machine can be tender and emotional it definitely can be destructive. We all have seen movies like Terminator, Matrix and Transformers: A mother sends a pre-programmed aging soldier from past to save his son's life in future, an ugly man-machine war with mechanic worms attacking humans and a sloppy camaro transformed into a gutsy robot send from another planet to save earth from another newly transformed villian robot. Scary isn’t it..

Artificial intelligence has taken over manual harsh workings and has improved efficiency at many companies. Amazon flaunts that their business has witnessed a swooping increase after deploying more than 15000 wheeled robots during Holiday season. Such technology can outsmart humans in no time. Although due to this technology, we got applications like Aidcolor which facilitate visually impaired people to identify color. Helping our country’s intelligence in scanning and netting out messages for possible threats and coding alerts is one of the many important benefits disposed by this technology. 

This dual faced robot revolution was born in Japan and is believed to be rooted in their Shinto faith wherein equal importance is imparted on both animate and inanimate objects. A very noble thought yes but putting my future in the hands of robotic era is a very dangerous notion. It is a virgin untapped arena where the possibility of a machine turning humane and nuclear stands still. Scary yes but that’s the future. 

Guess I just need to make peace with this concept in spite of my apprehensions as machines are here and they are good to stay!!