Robots Are Here To Help Us, Not Compete With Us

I think the fear of robots and AI is highly exaggerated. We are already judging the outcomes of something we haven’t even tried yet! It’s very unfortunate that the dystopian way of thinking keeps dominating and implanting negative thought about such remarkable technology.

Some people are afraid of losing their jobs, others are afraid AI might put an end to our existence. While there might some logic behind these fears, the risks are still manageable.

Robots are preparing humanity for something incredible and should rather be embraced, not feared. If you trace human history back to the last 1000 years, you will notice that many things haven’t changed much. We are stuck in a loop, doing the same things on regular basis. Same jobs, same careers, same way of thinking. We have been doing this for quite a while that we got used to it and became incredibly lazy! This hindered our ability to innovate and come up with new careers and jobs. After all, why think about something new when you can still live comfortably while doing the same thing! This may have affected our intelligence as well, in a negative way of course. We used to be more innovative than today.

As robots continue to get better and better, everyone’s job will eventually be taken. This will apply to almost EVERY job that exists today, including mine! This is where we will all find ourselves forced to think more creatively of new ways to make a living, which will be a turning point in our history. Just imagine living in a world where all the boring jobs are now the responsibility of machines. It’s going to be a slightly different world where humans will come up with (good) grand ideas that could have never happened if robots didn’t assume command of our jobs. In other words, an upgrade of our existing version.

What about the poor taxi driver who can’t afford to pay the rent or buy a meal? What will he do to make a living? As I said, with proper conscience and fair distribution of resources the risks will be manageable. Granting citizens unconditional basic income will solve part of the problem, but it has to be so basic that citizens should keep thinking of (good) creative ways to get additional resources to cover for the necessities…. a new smartphone, a new computer, luxury gadgets, fun trips around the world, etc.

If we don’t embrace the emergence of robots and resist this remarkable technology, we will keep doing the same things until the end of times, which will doom us all. We would lose our capacity to think creatively and the levels of our intelligence will drop dramatically. Thanks to robots, we will go through a new stage of artificial selection that will force us to use our brains more effectively.

With that being said, I fully support research on robotics and finding new way to automate all the existing jobs. As for AI, that’s a separate topic that will be discussed in a separate article.