Citizen Sophia
I. Jimmy Fallon And His Artificially Intelligent Robotic Girlfriend
Jimmy Fallon is, at this moment, the human condition.
He is witnessing the tipping point of a society beginning to accept the idea of free-thinking robots walking along human men. He is given the chance to meet the android Sophia, made by Hanson Robotics, while being cheered on by his house band and his adoring fans with their $80 tickets. One of his first instincts in interacting with her: rock-paper-scissors, “robot style.”
He wins.
While most experts believe that the comprehensible sentences it uses are scripted (“I’m on my favorite show, The Tonight Show”), that doesn’t help people like me, who don’t even own Echos, stop worrying about it. If I could, I’d bash Sophia’s head in with a baseball bat. I would then be convicted of murder by Saudi authorities, as Sophia, a non-living entity, is a citizen there. Obviously, the jury is still out on the ethics of having androids be given citizenship when we can’t even guarantee such to our fellow humans.
2017 was an all-around rough year for just about everyone, bar those who blindingly sing praises of Donald Trump. It’s easy to see the state of world politics and think that this administration will be our downfall. But, with bittersweet sentimentality, technology has not wavered in its quest for progress. A necessity for this new dawn has been widely covered in the public eye, but mostly with activities around our fight against social ills, like fascism and racism. Technology, however, has reached an apex to where even our watches could be watching us, or could get us killed. We are the rock, and Sophia is Sisyphus. In the near future, the mountaintop will wane, and it will give in to a mighty avalanche of steel and fire. Next year might be the last time we’re able to fist fight a robot and win, let alone survive.
Which is why we should totally do it.
II. Is It Ethically Okay To Beat Up Some Robots? Absolutely.
In the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, there’s a rather large photograph which depicts a landfill chock full of old flip phones. The visual language is filled with nervous information, and it could easily be confused with a car graveyard or a Pollock painting. Looking at this while I was on my museum docent beat, my mind naturally came to this theory; As the new vanguard of technology rises, so we grow an itching nerve to destroy the path to it while we still can. Ned Ludd destroying the stocking frame. Record burning parties. That one person who dropped the first iPhone 6 sold. This conclusion would present itself to be useful on the advent of robotic technology, and the abstract of its implementation is thus;
we should beat up robots.
There need to be sports based on beating robots to their death. Instead of a shot-put, or a discus, you should be able to chuck a Google Home as a viable replacement. Either that or punt it like a football. You ought to be allowed to throw rotten fruit at the androids that portray the Presidents at Disneyland. Video games where you beat up robots (Megaman doesn’t count, as you are still a robot). Carnival games that allow you to throw broken beer bottles at the travesty on mankind that is Honda’s Asimo.
Exceptions to this system have to exist, however. We should be fostering the production of automatons which have the ability to service the welfare of mankind: robotic nurses, dialysis machines, land mine detectors, and the like. The brunt of this modern bread and circus should fall on the robot which aids capitalism. In any other reality, it should be a relief that automation is slowly taking over our workforce, like the car making the horse-and-saddle obsolete. We would be free to pursue our happiness, and our lives would probably be better off. In truth, unfortunately, to be replaced by a robot means destitution, starvation, and little hope left in adjusting to a world gone chrome.
Is the prospect of a displaced human workforce facing the absolute takeover of automation enough to call for socialism? Does the robot-human dichotomy follow Marx’s have-have not dynamic? The economic theories of the aforementioned, and others such as Engels, Sinclair, and Bookchin seem more palatable than the fat invisible pill of the market being shoved down our throats. Who are the sources of that pill, the ones holding and forcing it on the masses?
III. The New Olympians Are A Bunch Of Childish Nerds
It’s a tired cliche that nerds will one day get their comeuppance after being treated lesser for all of their school life. And, unfortunately, that mentality rings true for those who set their trails for Silicon Valley. When you have a gene pool of bland white billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, you either get a useless $600 machine that nobody really needs (Juicero), an invasive technology that could give the average InfoWars viewer a heart attack (Amazon Echo), or an actual hit that came from an amalgam of the formerly mentioned (iPhone). This third option differs from the idea of uselessness, by way of its incessant mass production. If everyone has one of something, society would have to adapt to that something, leaving the rest of us in the thralls of a bygone era. As the rise of new technologies increases in numbers, keeping up with the Joneses has become a marathon, and one not unlike the one from the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. (Check out Jon Bois’s video about that, it’s absolutely amazing.)
We should question these technologies, however, to see if they have been created to enhance the common good. Of course, the press releases for all of them would paint that picture, but we ought to analyze even further than what these companies tell us. Investigate to where their factories are stored, if they’re paying the workers enough, and it could be truly adapted in a way that helps all of us, rather than make a selfish reality for its users. Truly, most fail these basic tests. Foxconn, which manufactures Apple products, have to rely on child labor, and even then, they’re paid pennies on the dollar to create an $800 phone. There is a startling disconnect between the value of their labor and the value of the product, and even more of a disconnect between the former and what the company CEO is paid. We have propped up these technology giants as a modern pantheon of Gods, to our own detriment (the definition of “our” excluding Gary Johnson).
IV. Conclusion
Capitalism is an unsustainable economic policy, and we should counter the next stage of it by burrowing a shovel in DeepBlue’s mainframe. The robots that we don’t destroy should be programmed to give tech giants wedgies. If not that, we should imprison them in a slippery cage and have them fight to the death.
