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Sophia is a new Saudi citizen. She is not like many of us. She is a machine, having human-like appearance and cognitive ability.
With Sophia, the fantasy around robots has reached a new height. Usually, Hollywood movie-makers and science fiction writes are known to be fantasising the possibility of robotics. But this time, one of the most conservative countries of the world has joined storytellers - by offering citizenship to a humanoid robot. This humanoid robot, Sophia, even participated in a meeting on the topic of "The Future of Everything - Sustainable Development in the Age of Rapid Technological Change" at the UN Headquarters in New York.
A machine may look like a human being and may also sense, perceive, speak and behave like humans. But many attributes of human beings are still beyond the study of existing body of scientific knowledge. But their roles in wealth creation by taking productive roles from humans are likely to accelerate. But such progression also spreads many concerns, starting from job loss to killer machines.
It seems that the dream of building machines with human shape and to behave like humans has been a long-cherished goal of scientists. These human-like artificial creatures are known as humanoids-or robots to many of us. It is said that in 50 AD, Greek mathematician Hero Alenandaria dreamed of a machine to automatically pour wine for party guests. In 1495, a humanoid that looked like an armoured Knight, known as Leonard's robot, was designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The first humanoid robot, which toured several countries, is UK's Eric. Humanoid Eric, built in 1928, was described by The New York Press as the "perfect man." Over the last 100 years, many initiatives have been taken by many organisations across the world to develop human-like creatures. Science fiction-writers and moviemakers alike have conceived the extraordinary power of these machines, creating the impression that these machines will one day take over human civilisation.
One of the notable examples, in recent times, in developing machines to impersonate human look and motion is Honda's ASIMO -- Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. With a goal to create a walking robot, Honda began developing humanoid robots in the 1980s. After working for more than a decade, Honda unveiled ASIMO in 2000. Since then, the company has introduced subsequent upgraded versions. Despite the ability to walk like human beings, even up the stairs, the machine has very limited perception capability. Although fitted with diverse sensors, including high-resolution cameras, ASIMO's ability to recognise objects and their variations in real-life is far inferior to that of a three-year-old kid.
But building machines having human-like capability for performing meaningful tasks is within our reach. We are progressing in building machines with sensing, perceiving and decision-making capability to get jobs done better at less cost - by delegating more roles from human to machines. And progressively, we are building smarter machines with artificial intelligence. Such continued progression of developing smarter machines and increasing delegation of productive role to these machines is a vital necessity for creating more wealth from depleting resources to sustain our development. The presence of Sophia at the UN meeting to discuss sustainable development in the age of rapid technological change appears to be a strong demonstration of such possibility.
In many instances, these machines may not look like human beings, even may take invisible forms, but they are going to work in close partnership with humans to improve our wealth creation capability while causing less harm to the environment. For example, autonomous driving vehicles without the presence of Sophia-like creatures in the driving seat has the potential to make roads more productive, while causing less harm to the environment, properties and lives. Similarly, such machines being present at the root of plants or underwater offers the potential to enable us to produce better quality crops, or fish at less cost, while making less wastage of inputs. Such capabilities of these machines in producing increasing wealth from depleting resources are vital for sustainable development.
Machines i.e. roobots developed for doing various mundane, even dangerous jobs, are rapidly taking the centre stage of global development. Despite many potential benefits, increasing the capability of these machines and their growing roles in productive activities are giving rise to serious issues. One of them is the threat of mass-scale unemployment at labour-intensive industries. In the absence of innovation capacity, developing countries run the risk of being caught in the discontinuity in the development pathway. Rapid progress of these machines is also creating destabilisation in the competition space of industrial productive activities. As a result, the assumption of Schumpeter with respect to catch-up strategy to address destabilisation caused by innovation is running the risk of being ineffective. Consequently, the role of the invisible hand of market economy in governing competition is also coming under threat.
There is a danger of developing merciless killer machines. Fully autonomous weapon systems (AWS) or killer robots, which are in the process of being developed over the last couple of decades, are close to turning the scientific possibility into war-field reality, and are poised to raise a plethora of questions. Some of the dangers range from the safety of running weapons that could potentially be hacked, to malfunction in defiance of orders, to the moral and legal issues concerning culpability for the machine's violent actions. In a recent letter signed by 100 robotics experts issued a warning to the United Nations saying, "Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways."
Such progression is associated with serious concerns. Monopolisation of market power and job-loss are among the major issues resulting in growing inequality in wealth distribution. Such smart machines are also going to power destructive forces to build merciless killer machines. Developments of smarter machines having human-like capabilities should be carefully interpreted from multiple dimensions; awareness should be created; balanced opinions should be formed at different levels; and optimal strategy along with policies should be formulated to maximise the benefit from emerging smart machines - to turn them into blessings instead of curse.
M Rokonuzzaman Ph.D is academic, researcher and activist on technology, innovation and policy.