Читать книгу The Shape of Shit to Come - Steve Lowe - Страница 11

Robots that act passably human are imminent. Sad to say that, as with the Internet, many people’s first response to this revolutionary new technology will be: ‘I could shag that.’

Out there, right now, some early adopters are already at it. One US company run by former construction worker Scott Maclean has been producing naughty robots – or rather, slightly mechanised sex-dolls – since 2004.

Maclean has satisfied customers’ requests for custom-made look-alikes of Angelina Jolie and Pamela Anderson. Another request was less predictable: one woman wanted her robot to look like Eurovision host Graham Norton.

So yes. The human race has produced its first Graham Norton robot sex-dolls. In our lifetimes. We should be, well … not proud exactly. But we should probably feel something.

The sex robots are coming. And so are the war robots. Lots of other useful robots are already here, doing the hoovering and cleaning the sewers. So are we on the verge of a time where finally – finally, after all the false robot dawns – robots start doing loads of our shitty jobs for us? And loads of our tricky jobs, like surgery? And all the other jobs?

In Asia, where attitudes to robots are ones of great enthusiasm, they are already making inroads into loads of areas of society. But will the robots get ideas above their stations and wipe out the illogical old humans in a big fuck-off robot takeover scenario?

The word ‘robot’ was coined by the Czech writer Karel Cˇapek – from robota meaning serf labour – for a cautionary 1920 play called R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The title refers to a fictional factory which pumps out artificial humanoids who initially work for mankind without complaint. Things take a turn for the worse when they rise up and wipe out all humanity. So it’s been a motif from the start.

But who or what will be in at the finish? Robots? I expect so.