222. Of Robots and Humans

The threat from robots is already amongst us. It is not that robots are aggres­sive. It is that human beings for the most part are over­whelm­ingly lazy. Humans will kill to claim a park­ing space instead of walk­ing a hun­dred metres. They will stuff them­selves stu­pid with drugs instead of tak­ing a lit­tle trou­ble over a decent diet. They will recede to a zom­bie immo­bil­ity in front of the first avail­able TV. And of course they will glee­fully sur­ren­der what­ever auton­omy they have to any robot that offers a hint of assis­tance. Thus we already have the curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of super cars with every avail­able safety tech­nol­ogy gen­er­at­ing as many acci­dents as a 1930s jalopy. The dri­vers sim­ply hand over their duty of care to the machine.