Robots Playing a Positive Part in Improving Human Life - Essay Example

Robots Insert Insert Introduction Robots recently have been involved in human daily activities and have been viewed in various ways both positively and negatively. The key reason for the robot development in the past was to enhance productivity as well as reducing the physical work the people had to do. The effective development and use of these robots in industries resulted to domestic appliances development such as washing machines, televisions, lawn mowers that improved people’s lives greatly. Despite the advantages of the robots, there have also been demerits of the same such as malfunction resulting to great losses, they have also been used in the warfare leading to deaths of innocent civilians as well as leading to artificial relationships, which could result to negative psychological effects. The paper looks at one of the key merits of the robot as well as three key problems resulting from the same. One of the key advantages of the robots is the fact that it has improved human life in various ways and has made it better than when the robots were not used. The robots, for instance, has facilitated education to disabled students with chronic heart disorders as well as lung diseases and who are unable to attend school but because of the robots are able to connect to other students at the school with the help of the robots. This has been evident as according to Robbie Brown, a chronic disease student Lexie have been using a robot named as VGo due to his chronic heart disease and has controlled it while at home using a computer while the robot is at school with its fellow students. Other students who have healthy problems and are unable to attend classes have employed the same. Those students could be unable to interact with their classmates as well as fall terribly academically, but the VGos has enhanced both interactions as well as improvement in their academics. Other examples of robots such as washing machines, dry cleaners, and lawn mowers among others have greatly reduced human physical work as well as reduced the time on which a particular item takes to be done thus resulting to an improvement in human life (Brown, 2013). Apart from the merit, robots have come with many shortcomings, which may affect human life negatively. One of the drawbacks of the robot is that currently it has led to a complex relationship with human beings. Currently, there have been developments of interactive robots such as ‘paro’ and ‘quiro’, which have been recently used to care and provide a companion to the elder people as well as children. The relationship as per Carla Turkle has an emotional bond, which is artificial. According to Carla Turkle whereby she uses an example of Simon whereby Simon is a humanoid robot, characteristics of understanding spoken words, having social skills such as expression of confusion, color, as well as forgiveness are highlighted. Sherry Turkle also uses a similar example of an elderly woman Miriam whose pet ‘Paro’ a robot, is able to respond to by turning its head when she strokes it. This has resulted to a problem of formation of intimate relationship fallacy with robots, which eventually lead to negative psychological impacts such as loosening social ties and running away from the reality. The second problem resulting from the same is the weakening of the social ties due to the use of the robots. As other technological effects such as Facebook, twitter, and What Sapp, despite improvement in communication, there has been a significant deterioration of social ties. This is because instead of meeting with friends, looking at the sick physically at the hospital or attending a party with friends, it has been easier to chat about the same on these social platforms. The same case has been on the robots such as VGos, ‘paro’ and ‘quiro’ that has led to the loss of touch with friends. As a result, it has weakened social ties. VGo according to Robbie Brown made Lexie lose touch with his friends, the smell of classroom, the taste of the school lunch as well as other important nonverbal cues that make one feel human. The same was evident to the elderly Miriam as they take the most time to the machine instead of interacting with other people leading to weak human ties (Brown, 2013). The third big problem resulting with the robots is because it can result to safety problems since it can be used for mass destruction. According to Noel Sharkey, these weapon zeds robots will result to aircraft, which are not manned by humans, which are known, as Drones developed to detect and kill enemies and, as a result, may lead to deaths of innocent people. This programming of robots to kill people will result to many issues as the suspects and justice be done as they are innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law, the bombing of drones will also result to structural damages as well as unnecessary killings which are a decision that opposes the reality. The positive part of it is that they will help to save soldiers’ lives, but the reality is they will save soldiers on one side and result to the death of soldiers on the other side as well as innocent people. According to Turkle, the robots use programs and the fact they are prone to be hacked by their opponents or other people who have ill motives. This will result to destruction as the opponents will use them to attack them as well as ill motive people will cause great destruction due to the same since the robots do not know right or wrong they just follow orders. These trust and safety problems become a major problem with the robots. Conclusion Despite the fact that the robots have played a positive part in improving human life, they also have various weaknesses that may result to great negative impact to human life. It helps academically as his able to participate at class while still at home and had all conversation in the class through the robot’s help. Relationships lead to artificial emotional bond, which does not return real human feelings since the robots are incapable of having feelings. The robots have led to the substitution of real emotion with loose social ties because they may look like humans; they are still machines. They will continue to change many aspects of human life for a very long time. References 1. Brown, R. (2013) “A swiveling proxy that will Even Wear a Tutu”. New Yoke Times. 2. Sharkey, N. (2008) “Computer Science: The ethical frontiers of robotics.” In M. L. Kennedy & W. J. Kennedy (Eds.), Writing in the disciplines (7th Ed.) (pp. 397-399). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. 3. Turkle, S. (2011) “Alone together: The robotic moment.” In M. L. Kennedy & W. J. Kennedy (Eds.), 4. Turkle, Judith. "How one boy with autism became BFF with Apple’s Siri." Journal on love (2014): 1-11. Read More