Why Robots and Me?

Because we can’t live without each other, we’re struggling to make each other happy, and I really, truly want our relationship to work. 

Think of this blog as couples’ therapy for the age of automation, and try not to mind too much that only one of the partners has bothered to turn up. Could be the robots will join in due course, but until they get past the expletive phase and master the basics of placing an online order, I think it best to stay solo, trust to the process, open myself up to love and learning and try to resist bitter wisecracks, rehashing ancient arguments and harking back to my robot-free days when the closest machines came to Artificial Intelligence was the mis-sold RobotChef – not the Transformer-in-a-Toque I expected to see when my mother opened the box, but instead a clunky beige food-mixer with a range of sharp-edged accessories none of us ever figured out how to attach, let alone use.

But enough about the past. Let’s start with introductions, in the manner of first dates, punitive legal documents and awkward cocktail party chatter: 

By Robots, I mean anything from industrial precision machines to networks of algorithms to self-driving cars to chatbots to pseudo-neural networks. Anything which gets called Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Robotics, Autonomous Tech. All dynamic problem-solving machines. Any bit of electronic kit which we suspect might be doing something that’s not a million miles from thinking. Or being, in the sense of behaving more like a living organism than a tool. 

By Me, I mean Fionnuala O’Conor, a European woman who has founded three people tech startups, lived in seven countries on four continents, loves the countryside and making art and asking difficult questions. I also mean people in general. Genus homo sapiens. Evolved not designed. Makers of art and war. The world’s only extra-terrestrial species. Destroyers of the planet. Creators of robots.

Yeah, creators of robots. Because that’s the really interesting thing about this relationship: it’s unequal in ways that should be simple but that we don’t yet understand. We built the robots, but we did it in a way that’s very different from how things usually get created on earth. The robots weren’t a product of natural selection, or tectonic forces, or chemical processes. We designed them, planned them, engineered them into being. And yet, rather than being our servants, they are already in some ways our masters. Despite having written their code and screwed together their body parts, we are constantly surprised by what they can do, what they can’t do, by the choices they make and the ways in which they deviate from our intentions.

I want to understand the robots, I want to understand myself and other people, and I think it makes sense to do those things together. Because the robots aren’t going away, and neither are we, and if we can go forward together with enhanced understanding, appreciation, adaptation and engaged curiosity, could be we’ll make it through the 21^st century, even beyond. 

I hope you enjoy the blog! Please use the comments section to share thoughts, counter-arguments, follow-ups and questions. I won’t always have answers, but I’ll rarely be able to resist continuing the conversation.

Sitting comfortably?  Then let’s begin…