 |
| © Provided by The Daily Beast HBO |
From The Daily Beast
The specter haunting Europe—and the rest of the world, for that
matter—isn’t communism anymore, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels so
famously wrote in their 1848 manifesto. It’s something far more
insidious, and something that Marx and Engels could have hardly
imagined: automation, which is to say, AI and robots in all their
various iterations.
This slow introduction of artificial intelligence into human economies is the focus of director Maxim Pozdorovkin’s latest documentary, The Truth About Killer Robots,
which premieres this Sunday on HBO. Pozdorovkin takes an unflinching
look at the way automated cars, industrial-strength robots, and
bomb-detecting autonomous devices have infiltrated human life—and the
effects, good or bad, that have come along with them.
The documentary is narrated by a robotic “host” named Kodomoroid. Kodomoroid is disconcertingly humanlike,
although her stiff movements and halting voice very quickly give her
away as a robot. The decision to have an automaton narrate a documentary
about killer robots seems a bit too on the nose, and at times lends the
project a distracting, though no less engaging, Westworld-esque futurism.
Kodomoroid
lays out the framework for the documentary, and introduces an anecdote
involving a deceased worker at a Volkswagen factory in
Germany—apparently the result of a “malfunctioning” robot. The details
are pretty horrifying: after entering into a “cage” with a coworker
where robots are allowed to move independently, a robot arm swung around
and pinned the 21-year-old worker against a metal wall, crushing his
chest and killing him. Volkswagen was, unsurprisingly, cagey about the
incident, and an official investigation into the worker’s death remained
open for several years after the fact, despite testimony from his
coworker implicating the robot.
The accident at the Volkswagen
factory introduces the central question that the documentary, somewhat
unsuccessfully, seeks to answer: can robots be guilty of killing humans,
however unintentional the death was? And how do we hold them
accountable if so? Quite a lot of the doc is spent speaking to experts,
both legal and philosophical, about the implications of robot
interference in human life—and no clear answer is determined.
The
documentary is more engaging when it examines the effects of robots and
automated labor on the workforce and world economies. The introduction
of automatons into factory jobs has lead to the displacement of hundreds
of workers, and has forced surviving workers to work harder, longer,
and more intricate jobs. Christoph Walter, a robotics engineer in
Freiburg, Germany, doesn’t see automated labor as an issue, though. When
interviewed in the documentary, he explains, “We don’t want to replace a
worker [with a robot]. We want to support workers.”
It’s a nice
sentiment that would likely cause Marx to turn in his grave, but
regardless of intentions, the introduction of automated labor is bound
to change the landscape of industry in some way. In one instance, a
Chinese tech executive brought in robots when facing a labor shortage,
curtailing his total number of employees and completely changing the way
automated labor can be utilized. Although in this situation there was
simply a dearth of available workers, what would stop higher-ups from
replacing factory workers who, say, went on strike, with robots? The
ramifications, as the documentary is right to hint at, are huge.
Killer Robots
also explores the ways in which automatons can affect other sectors,
notably the service and law enforcement spheres. Self-driving cars,
manufactured by the likes of Tesla, seem to be the vehicles of the
future; as the documentary explains, however, they’re not without their
flaws. A particularly grisly accident involving a man in a self-driving
Tesla serves as a cautionary tale for those who think that automated
vehicles are invincible: the Tesla, with the man inside, hit a semitruck
head-on while going 74 miles per hour. His car barreled under the
truck, ran through two fences, and eventually stopped when it struck a
pole. The driver died from “massive craniocerebral blunt trauma with
facial and scalp lacerations” and “avulsion of brain and upper brain
stem.”
The central question dogging the documentary, and many of our conceptions of automatons and AI (think: Westworld)
is, of course, related to robots’ morality. Isaac Asimov, the famous
author and biochemist, laid out The Three Laws of Robotics in 1942.
First, he said, robots shouldn’t be allowed to harm humans in any way.
Second, robots must be programmed to obey commands from humans, unless
they directly conflict with the first rule. And third, a robot must be
allowed to protect itself, assuming that doesn’t conflict with the first
or second rules.
Asimov, of course, couldn’t have imagined the
sheer scope of artificial intelligence and automated labor that exists
today. His questions, however moralistic, are worth examining, as Killer Robots seems
to suggest, especially in the context of situations like police
robotics, where automatons are used to kill or apprehend suspected
criminals, as well as retrieve bombs and protect citizens.
But as Killer Robots
suggests, it’s next to impossible to try and prevent the misuse of
robots. As long as they’re made by humans, and therefore not as smart as
humans, it’s reasonable to expect there will be some hurdles to
cross—some much bigger than others.
COMMENTS