Technology of mankind is advancing in blinding speed. A few years ago, I remember myself excited about getting a chocolate sized phone in my pocket. However, I currently see myself now having a tiny computer in my pocket called a smart phone—fascinating, but also startling. I Robot, Surrogates, and the Matrix are the movies of mankind’s advanced technology getting the better of man. As a high school student interested in robotics, seeing the near “could be” future through these movies really gives spark to my life. However with all this excitement of the advanced future, come the worries and problems than man is faced with. The famous philosopher, Heidegger, once said that technology is not an act of means, but rather an act of revealing. However, he said that the problem of modern technology is that it challenges nature too far by demanding too much. An era, when technological advance goes too fast that it outruns humanitarian and philosophical studies by two folds—truly frightening indeed.
In my view, as humans are born to this world, we start our lives with a tiny built in morality core. This means that we are naturally born with basic ethics and virtue, so that all we have to do is utilize them in the right way. However, artificial intelligent robots, a creation of man, lack these properties, which means that we must devise some sort of moral and ethics algorithm for these robots. However using virtue and creating one is completely different. Socrates in Plato’s Meno said that no man knows virtue, but only sees the shadow of it. This means that we only know the true direction of virtue just enough to use it, but have no true knowledge of it. Philosophy needs to be with robotics so that we can truly find what virtue is and apply it to future robotics.
Where do robots stand in our current world? Humans in the past usually had certain rules dividing the life and substances on earth. According to the great chain of being, the hierarchy starts from god and progresses down to angels, demons, stars, nobles, men, animals, plants, and stones. Also according to the dualistic view, man is divided into mind and body. However, what of self-thinking, conscious robots equip with near human artificial intelligence? They think, reason, and even contemplate like humans, but carries metal for body. Where should we put these robots in the hierarchy of beings? With stones, or humans? Also how will it affect the mind-body problem? Will it give proof for monistic view? If these metaphysical questions aren’t solved beforehand robotics, confusion and chaos will erupt between humans, and also robots. Technology without the help of philosophy will bring disastrous consequences.
Till here I talked about how philosophy could help robotics, but now I’d like to turn the tables around and talk about how robotics could help philosophy. Many think that writing is just an action of converting our thoughts to ink, a one-way output. However, through the process of writing, the process of rethinking and unraveling the complicated thoughts of the brain, we discover a lot of the world and ourselves. Hegel said, by changing and observing the world that is not he, people find individuality. Thus similar to this, through the process of creation of robots, humans will be able to discover themselves and understand the world much deeply, leading to the development of philosophy. Now not only does technology gain from philosophy, but philosophy also gains from technology.
