Robots, now numbering millions across factories and homes, serve as both solutions and challenges. They address issues such as economic productivity and care for an aging population, but also raise many questions that extend beyond technology into social and political realms.
For centuries, humans have used machines to replace physical labor. Machinery in textile mills sparked the industrial revolution and was followed by trains, cars and cranes that brought unprecedented progress and prosperity. The more than 4 million robots now working in industry worldwide continue that story, particularly aiding countries facing labor shortages and population declines.
However, we are a long way from a fully automated world. The Republic of Korea, which has one of the world's lowest birthrates and leads in automation, employs only one robot for every 10 manufacturing workers, while the global average is about one for every 70.
In domestic settings, the gap between science fiction and reality is even wider. While millions of robots now vacuum floors and mow lawns, the promise of automated homes has not materialized, partly because progress in dexterity has been slower than expected. We still lack robots capable of handling the complex needs of the elderly. Although some robots provide companionship, emotional support and basic physical assistance, the complexities of real home environments present significant challenges.
Since the 1960s, futurists have repeatedly warned that robots would destroy jobs on an epic scale, leading to mass unemployment. Most of these forecasts proved dramatically wrong: overall employment went up, not down, and more recent predictions, such as the disappearance of radiologists, have proven equally misleading. Most industrial robots perform basic tasks such as assembling, sorting and moving things around. Their rise has indeed increased the demand for specialist roles such as engineers and workers who can collaborate with robots on complex tasks. But there are few signs of a job apocalypse.
However, the bigger questions raised by the advent of robots are becoming more pressing. Machine labor has freed millions from grinding toil, enabling women, in particular, to engage in paid work. But the rise of machines often results in short-term job losses. The Luddites of the 1810s, who destroyed machines in England, were rationally responding to changes that destroyed their jobs while enriching a few. It was not until the end of that century that newly industrialized societies began to share the benefits of mechanization more fairly through clean water, sewerage, welfare states, universal education and healthcare.
Today, the debate continues on how to distribute the costs and benefits of automation more fairly. Microsoft founder Bill Gates once suggested a robot tax equivalent to the income tax of displaced workers. If jobs do shrink sharply, we might need new basic income models, an idea supported by both the political right and left. Additionally, the concentration of wealth among capital owners has prompted calls in the United States for redistributing AI-generated wealth to the wider public.
There are equally difficult questions about how to live with robots. For some tasks, we may prefer their anonymity: robot bankers, doctors or traffic police may be easier to deal with if we fear humans will judge us. On the other hand, we tolerate errors far more readily in humans than in machines: driverless cars, for instance, need to demonstrate accident rates significantly lower than those of human drivers to gain social acceptance.
As robots get more integrated into daily life, new rules and regulations will be essential, just as happened with the spread of the telephone and electricity. Cars, for example, are now subject to extensive rules on speed, skills, emissions and safety. Intelligent societies learn to optimize technologies through effective governance. AI and robots will be no different.
Importantly, we must avoid the risk of cognitive surrender. One fascinating experiment showed that people trusted robots far too much in emergencies, ignoring their own judgment and available evidence when trying to escape from fires. It is vital to retain our critical faculties rather than blindly follow machines that are always capable of error. These issues also form part of the broader debate on how emerging technologies should be developed and governed, a topic addressed at the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Zhejiang province. As AI and robotics increasingly shape people's lives, international dialogue on responsible innovation, effective governance and the relationship between humans and technology will become ever more important.
When the term "robot" first appeared in Karel Capek's play R.U.R. more than a century ago, it referred to synthetic biological creatures capable of love and taking over from humans. Generations since have lived with the fear that robots might be our superior successors. That threat is still a long way off. Now our choices are more basic: about deployment, fairness and misuse, and the new rules and habits we will need to live in a robot-filled world.
The author is the former head of policy in the UK Prime Minister's office and is now a professor of collective intelligence, public policy and social innovation at University College London.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
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