What's this then? Image: Wikimedia
A new poll reveals that some Americans are optimistic that robots will be doing our dirty work by the year 2030. The survey was conducted by YouGov/Huffington Post, and had some curious results:
In 2030, do you think we will have robots that can do the following things?Drive cars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46%Clean our homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58%Take care of the elderly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25%Have sex with humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%Fight in the military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48%None of these . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14%
A clear majority of Americans believe that robots will eventually be cleaning up after us, and about half of us think that robots will go to war on our behalf and drive us to the mall. That's weird, because, you know, robots are already doing all of these things.
We've got the Roomba that cleans our homes. That's a robot. We have unmanned Predator and Reaper drones (like the one pictured above) that are currently fighting for our military in Afghanistan and beyond. Those are robots. And while the Google Car is still in development, we have plenty of cars that come equipped with GPS systems and auto-braking mechanisms—again, robots.
Even those areas where most Americans apparently think it totally outlandish that robots may be working in 2030—they already are. Robots are already providing Americans with all sorts of healthcare assistance: pacemakers, health monitors, even robots that fit our more traditional notion of 'robot', like iRobot's hospital bot, which was just approved by the FDA this year. Yet, interestingly, 58% of respondents said they wouldn't let robots take care of one of their relatives. Even though they clearly already do.
And yes, we're already having sex with robots. This SaSi vibrator, for instance, comes equipped with artificial intelligence, and it "learns" what pleasures you most. There are robotic fleshlights for men. And, of course, there are already full-scale robot love dolls. Plenty of people, in other words, are already having sex with robots. Yet only 9% say they would consider doing so, according to the poll. And 42% would consider it cheating if their significant other got off with a bot.
So the real question this raises is how do we not see that the robot-filled future has already arrived? Is it simply because, while robots are assisting us with every aspect of our lives, they're just not the tin men or bleep-blooping droids from our sci-fi mythologies? Partly. When the poll asks us if we can imagine robots cleaning our house, we picture Rosie from the Jetsons, not the Roomba. We picture the Terminator in the trenches, not Predator drones flying high. We picture android cabbies, not motion-sensing auto-brakes. We picture Robot and Frank not heart rate monitors.
It's also partly because most people can't afford the higher-end robots that are more clearly robots—the future is here, goes the phrase, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about our robo-confusion is that it probably means that we (or at least the well-off among us) will keep pushing inventors, designers, and robotics companies to build more human-like robots until it satisfies our expectations. Robots that look and behave similarly to humans elicit the most evocative responses; they trigger our greatest excitement and deepest fears. The most truthful way to read the poll is that about half of Americans think that in 17 years, autonomous, humanoid robots will be doing our dishes, fighting our wars, and driving us to work. And how would we relate to robots then?
Well, some 33% of us would already be comfortable commanding a robotic "servant," and treating it as such. We seem, above all, intent on imagining, even desiring outright, robotic slaves that resemble humans. And we might not stop until we get them.