• Question: Do you believe we could have robot servants in the future? Is this plausible or would that never be able to happen theoretically?

    Asked by p.u.r.p.l.e. to Jackie, Michele, Oliver on 18 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Izzleflump.
    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Robot servants yes…. however I wouldn’t want it to end up like I-Robot! haha There are lots of robots being developed all over the world to help people, and already there are robots and machines in factories which are like servants, doing the jobs people used to do. However this runs the risk of putting people out of jobs and leaving people with nothing to do, which will make us lazy 🙁

      So yes I think robot servants will be a thing of the future – whether they will be as intelligent or as human-looking as the robots in films I don’t know. I think there was a study done on this in Japan and people preferred robots that looked like robots and not human-like as it freaked them out haha I guess people are worried that being too human-like would enable them to blend in with society and eventually take over the world! 😉

    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 20 Mar 2015:

      Well we actually already do if you think about it — those little vacuuming robots called Roombas 🙂 How complex and capable those robots may eventually be is a bit more up for debate — making a robot able to do anything a human can is in general a very hard problem, and may never be possible. We’ll keep working on it though!

      As Jackie points out, we also need to think hard about how much we really want robots to do for us.

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