WE ARE ALL ROBOTS ANYWAY

A Story by Elise Anton

What's all the fuss about?

There’s a lot of fuss these days about the “rise of the machines”. Fears highlighted and spread by the likes of Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak; apocalyptic warnings about ‘killer robots’ and artificial intelligence taking over our lives and ultimately eliminating us as a race.

Yet are we not all organic robots anyway? From birth till death, our lives are regulated, planned, authorised and meticulously recorded.

We require certificates, permissions, licences; we adhere to determined values, expectations, rules and restrictions.

We are set milestones; the same path really: Birth, education, job, family, debt, retirement, death. Only accidents, illness and misadventure steer us from this path, causing us to miss one or several milestones due to our untimely demise.

If we dare question the process, if our pre-set program malfunctions, we are labelled, tagged, red-flagged. We have gone rogue and our program must be ‘adjusted’. We are then medicated, induced into therapy, incarcerated, ostracised.

The song “Little boxes” comes to mind. “Ticky tacky” is what I see when I look out from the upstairs window of our townhouse. Or when I’m stuck in traffic on the freeway built to eliminate said traffic. Or when I venture into the City, and observe the procession of suits.

We are robots, people. Don’t be fearing the machines, they are extensions of ourselves, one machine building another.

Lift your head up from the phone screen and look around. Some re-programming took place and you missed it, or perhaps you welcomed it, for it is convenient after all; less to think about. Thoughts are bothersome. Drop your head again and immerse yourself in the latest distraction.

You robot you!