Will Humans And Humanoid Robots Be Indistinguishable On The Street 500 Years From Now?
Let’s say they looked, acted, and felt the same, could engage in conversations normally, and even affect emotions.
If you lived 500 years in the future and there were robots walking around which were indistinguishable from humans, would it bother you?
Categories: Robots | 
Tags: From, Humanoid, Humans, Indistinguishable, Robots, Street, Will, Years | 
18 Comments »
500 years from now the earth will be in the middle of resetting itself after another ice age.
If the moon were made of spare ribs – would you eat it?
enough said
the question is irrelevent as the planet will be destroyed by the sun in a solar meltdown in @100 years ! theres another theoretical question for you
well they might replace us but just think how will they pay their taxes.
Which are you?
I’m not sure what you mean by “felt the same” – do you mean that they have the same feelings as humans, or that they are tactilely indistinguishable from humans?
If it’s the latter – so they are, as far as we can tell, identical to humans but do not actually FEEL the emotions they seem to be expressing, the question is related to the Problem of Other Minds in philosophy of mind. How can we be sure that the people we are interacting with right now actually feel the things they claim to feel? How can we be sure that they, like us, are conscious, have experiences, feel pain, have thoughts? They could be (for the sake of argument) automatons already, or they could be what’s called philosophical zombies, people who appear just like people but have no consciousness, nothing it’s like to be them.
The common replies to the Problem of Other Minds are to admit that this is a possibility, but generally to reject it as a serious issue. It may be the case, but it’s improbable enough that it’s not something that really needs to effect the way we reason and behave. It’s true that we can’t be certain that other people have consciousness. Given the mysterious nature of consciousness even today, it is possible, perhaps even probable, that we will NEVER be able to be sure that others have consciousness. Basically, we have no choice but to go about assuming that they do.
But how does all this bear on your initial question? It leads to two possible responses:
1 – we already can’t be sure that those around us are conscious, so we shouldn’t be troubled by interacting with those we KNOW aren’t conscious.
2 – we can’t be sure that those around us are conscious, but we would KNOW that the robots AREN’T. We should give humans the benefit of the doubt and assume they do have consciousness, and see robots as different.
I think 1 is more logical, but realistically, can I say I could really be happy with a robot that told me it loved me, acted like it loved me, but I knew it had no feelings, no consciousness? Probably not (but again, can I really be sure that the humans who do this actually feel the feelings they show?). So it all depends on what kinds of relationships we have with these robots, to me…
Final point worth considering: they think it may be possible, someday, to create computers (and thus, robots) which DO have consciousness. Would it make a difference that their origin was different – factory assembly – if they were perceptibly just like humans AND had consciousness?
NO!, a true human will be able to tell the difference between a false human. though they may be similar they would never truly be real
The Tyrell Corporation always claimed that their product was “more human than human”. This is actually pretty good question. It brings up echoes of slavery, what is life, and man playing God. Truthfully, it wouldn’t bother me. I believe he would bring equality to mankind. The great eras of mankind’s history, Egypt, Rome, Renaissance Europe, were all based on a slave economy. If those slaves are machines, then the gulf between the haves and the have-nots will shrink. The downside is, why work at a relationship. When you can go out and buy a girlfriend, who looks like Claudia Christian, or a Vogue model. Or worse, what if you discover into your relationship that your dream girl is a skin job. Would you be upset to find out that you were inadvertently dating a toaster? And then there is the church. You must keep in mind there having kittens over a movie this year. If you could go to a shop and buy number six from Battle Star Galactica, or Roy Batty from Blade Runner, the clergy would have heart failure. Even if these examples of the humanoid robot were most moralistic creatures to ever walk the earth. One would hope that with the drudgery of work taken from mankind another Renaissance would occur. But what if the effect was laziness and apathy? The changes to mankind would be vast and profound. I look forward to it.
There are predictions from some experts that artificial intelligence might arrive sooner than we think. Anyway, I do like the idea of androids around. Sounds really interesting
Probably…..are you……LOL
i think the goal of creating a humaniod robot is kind of convoluted. other than trying to create the illusion of a possible emotional connection, what would be the point? a robot that would be useful in other ways would, i think, necessarily have a more practical shape than “humanoid”
but if they were walking around in the future, i would not be bothered. i am not bothered by things walking around unless they are 50 feet tall. if they were making life difficult in other ways, then i might be bothered.
As long as they don’t plaguerize my original copy of DNA, I wouldn’t care.
Of course. Go Data!
Of course not. All my friends are Vulcans and androids.
I am an android.
no because humans are doomed to failure, too many crazy terrorists and just crazy people.
They won’t be indistinguishable – why would anyone bother going to the expense of replicating human appearance? They will probably have something face-like in order to interact with them better, but that’s all unless someone was trying to take over the world by replacing people with cyborgs or robots – yeah, like that’s gonna work!
People would not want to give robots any rights, so making sure they look like robots would be key to that. And it would be better to keep their size smaller when possible to they can be packed tightly in your car trunk or put a couple on the passenger seat to bring to the mall and carry your stuff while you shop. Every inch of them will be for pure utility, so wasting money making they as inefficient as we are would not make sense – they will be designed directly to certain tasks or sets of tasks and they will probably look more like R2D2 than C3PO.
That would bother me. However they would have laws to prevent that because of fraud, scams and so on. You could bet on that.
I will let you know if I come back in 500 years time.
There will be something around, but it probably won’t be robots. It’ll be something that doesn’t exist yet. 500 years ago do you think that the pilgrims thought that the world would be run by computers?