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by EDWARD SZTUKOWSKI
News Editor
University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey has warned humanity to step up its protection from robots.
Sharkey is calling for legislative bodies to begin looking into guidelines for service robots, and is urging his fellow scientists to think of ethical issues that could rise.
Sharkey is a professor of artificial intelligence and robots, and believes if humans do not start setting guidelines for machines, we will run into ethical problems in the future.
I
know what you must be thinking. This guy is a nut job! There is no way
man-made machines could destroy or alter humanity! They are programmed
not to!
Wrap
your mind around this fact, human. In 2008, sales of service and
personal robots numbered $5.5 million. The IFR Statistical Department,
which presents global statistics on robots, estimates in the next two
years, that number will double.
Robots
are everywhere, and Sheffield believes with the growing number of
service robots, chances of utilizing robots in child and elderly care
are becoming increasingly realistic.
“Research
into service robots has demonstrated close bonding and attachment by
children, who, in most cases, prefer a robot to a teddy bear,” he said
in an article on sciencemag.org.
Does
anybody remember Teddy Ruxpin? It was a robotic teddy bear popular in
the ‘80s, which utilized a tape deck to read stories. His mouth moved
and it was creepy.
The
kind of world where robot nannies tuck Junior into bed frankly
frightens me. What if Robo-Nanny 3000 has a glitch and tucks him in too
tight?
“Because
of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be
left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several
days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of
social isolation on development is unknown,” Sharkey said.
There
are certain robots I would not mind be raised by. R2D2 would be pretty
cool, but you could get stuck with C3PO and he sucks.
In
all honesty though, measures need to be taken before robot child
rearing becomes a reality. Parents sit their children in front of the
TV and expect to escape for the length of a TV show.
If
parents can buy high tech robots that guarantee their child’s safety, I
think they would take full advantage of it and not be around for their
children as much.
Sharkey
said studies can’t be done to test how a child will develop if robots
raise them, but results from maternal deprivation suggest a severe
outcome.
What happens when a robot raises a child? How can the child learn to feel?
A child needs a parent, and no robot could replace that fully.
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