Week 3: Robotics + Art When the day comes where robots can do jobs more efficiently than humans, what will happen? Kuka Robot This day has already come.  Today, automated machines mass produce millions of goods every day that would take humans a lifetime to create.  There are positives to this, as more goods can be produced, but there are also negatives as jobs are also taken from workers as they are replaced by robots who do not require a salary. In the movie iRobot (first storied by Isaac Asimov), robots are massed produced with the goal to give every citizen their own helper-bot.  The robots are given three rules which they are required to follow: iRobot Trailer Link A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. However, the movie takes a twist when one of the robots becomes unique and is able to break the fundamental laws set by the programmers of the bots.  This idea of uniqueness makes the robot special, and the main character (played by Will Smith) recognizes the bot's potential and the possible repercussions that could occur if all robots could think and make decisions for themselves without a set of rules.   Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin also writes how uniqueness is very important, "The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced."  This quote reflects the idea that an object retains value based on being individual and being associated with a specific place in time (The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction).  The ideas of robots and mass production have been around for centuries, but we are now beginning to witness the effects that technologically advanced robots will have on the world.

Works Cited

I, Robot. Perf. Will Smith. 20th Century Fox, 2004. DVD.  "Isaac Asimov." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov>.  Kuka. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kuka.com>.  Osborne, Peter. "Walter Benjamin." Stanford University. Stanford University, 18 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/>.