In the 21st century, the robot will be the place occupied by slave labour in ancient civilization "Nicolas Tesla.
The word "Robotics" comes from the Czech word for forced or domestic labour. The concept was inspired by an American Russian sci-fi writer who characterized robots in his short stories as helpful servant to man and view them as a cleaner race.
With the continuous advancement in technology and artificial intelligence, people are raising concerns about the production of robots for the labour market. Apart from the general fear of robots taking over most jobs that are carried out by human labour. There is another fear that robots will turn against humans in the future, given the physical efficiency they are designed force, coupled with the artificial infinite intelligence system that would enable them to learn and adapt to new concepts. In order words, they’ll be given a mind of their own. It sounds a little scary, especially now that we've witnessed a lot of the things we've seen in sci-fi movies. However, scientist and robotics engineers have come out to debunk such idea of robots destroying man.
Robotics is a branch of artificial intelligence consisting of electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science for design which aims to create machines that can efficiently perform labour and assist man.
From the ancient times, most civilization have been leveraging on human labour to develop infrastructures, agriculture, and every aspect that contribute to a nation’s growth and wealth.
This human labour started in a primitive way which we know to be slave labour. The idea of slavery was society’s perceived lesser human being serving a society’s perceived higher human being who calls himself “master”. Slavery was as acceptable and not a crime in those days. We have various types of slavery. There’s servitude slavery, sex slavery, construction slavery, agriculture slavery, entertainment slavery etc. For the fact that slavery was legal, it gave many slave masters the right to use their human slaves for any work without compensation or appreciation, except with food to feed them energy. All the great civilizations we feel about the past and present the prospectus on the massive use of forced labour. The Roman empire not only utilized slave labour for construction and farming, but they also effectively expanded the affairs into games and entertainment known as gladiator tournament for their citizens and still made more profits off their people through the slaves.
Fast forward to the transatlantic slave trade which was basically because of lack of huge labour force for development, exploitation, and production. Which became the largest slave transactions in history. It was later cancelled because of the cons which came with it and it pushed many innovators to think of ways to design systems like machines to replace that position.
Today, even though slavery has been abolished and considered morally wrong and an economic offence, an estimate of 4omillion people still suffer today in slavery. The most frightening thing is that one in four victims is a child.
We are closer than ever to put an end to slavery once and for all with the acceptance of robotic automation.
Slaves were forced to do repetitive and dangerous tasks while cutting them from any social, physical means of escape. Machines on the other hand, perform repetitive task without concerns for the dangers or physical demand.
In advanced countries, machines/robots are already employed in industries associated with chattel slavery abroad, such as mining, farming, and textiles. World leaders are pondering on the idea that: if automation were to become widespread and cost effective enough, it would eliminate the need for cheap labour and make slavery economically inefficient. Just recently, China purchased 56,000 robots in 2014 to rapidly increase factory automation to close their employment gap as workers' wages and education rise.
Low skilled workers may be transformed into a more value-added tasks or even new jobs in robots manufacturing.
Robots will also combat another form of slavery like sex trafficking. In countries all over the world and especially richer countries, an estimate of 4.8 million people are sexually exploited and held in slavery.
Brothels have emerged in countries like Japan and US that provides sexual companionship with realistic sexual dolls.
A.I. researcher David Levy said that such institutions can reduce prostitution rates. As the dolls become more lifelike.
With the invention of robots, they can serve us in at home, at work, construction site etc instead of exploiting ourselves for gains.
In conclusion, automation may make reducing chattel slavery easier in some states, but it can’t inoculate societies from the social and political ills that create opportunities for exploitation.
