The New Breed
What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots—inspired by how we interact with animals—could be the key to making our future with robot technology work
There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, suggesting that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don’t leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement—rather than replace—our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future.
A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems, and how we relate—not just to nonhumans, but also to one another.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Darling, a researcher at MIT's media lab, debuts with an upbeat if inconsistent tract on humans' relationship with artificial intelligence. Challenging the notion that robots will soon replace humans in the workforce and could "outpace human intelligence and take control of the world," Darling insists that robots shouldn't be seen as replacements for humans, and calls attention to their ability to do "dirty, dull and dangerous" work, such as mining and certain military operations. Drawing on humans' relationships with animals, she ponders the ethical and legal implications of advancing technology, and how humans should approach AI: she addresses why people get emotional about robots (such as R2-D2), linking it to a human tendency to anthropomorphize animals and pets, and considers if aggression toward robots marks the same lack of empathy as animal abuse. She also insists that AI creators and users be held responsible for machines that "misbehave," and cautions against a future in which companies that claim "the robot did it" are let off the hook. While entertaining, Darling wanders out on tangents (her treatment of the cat lady trope, for example) that lack cohesion. Readers curious about AI's ethical conundrums, though, will find this a breezy enough primer.
