A lot of people are becoming concerned about the development of ever more sophisticated robots. In the near term, the worry is that as robots take over tasks presently performed by humans, people will become unemployed in overwhelming numbers, with no prospect of finding other forms of employment in the future. Unlike the past, where new kinds of work were eventually found to replace those jobs made unnecessary by technology, the future may displace people forever. Even if those without work are fed and housed by those robots, so that the basic needs of life are met for those unemployed millions, it is not clear what the psychological impact will be once people are forced to accept the fact that they are useless. Looking further ahead, some worry that robots will take over and eliminate mankind, either as the result of neglecting man’s welfare through indifference on their part, or by deciding that man is a nuisance that needs to be destroyed.
It is not obvious, however, that the elimination of man and his replacement by robots would necessarily be a bad thing. I suppose the first issue to address is whether robots would be conscious, since the conception of robots as mindless automata would seem rather bleak. Though science fiction movies seldom include dialogue directly addressing the question of robot consciousness, most of us automatically assume that robots in movies are indeed conscious. Whether it be Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet (1956), HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Colossus of Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), or the title character of The Terminator (1984), along with countless other examples, these computers or robots in the movies always seem to be conscious. In real life, on the other hand, we never attribute consciousness to computers and robots. Though designers and programmers may get better at making robots simulate human nature, even to the point of claiming to perceive the world around them, to have desires, and even to feel pain, yet we are likely to suspect that it is all just a very good case of mimicry. In all likelihood, the simulation will eventually reach the point where we will presume consciousness on the part of real robots just as we do with their movie counterparts. In any event, as the problem of other minds has always been insoluble even when restricted to people, it will presumably be no less so with robots.
It all may come down to religion. Those who believe that man has an immortal soul that survives the body will suppose that it is this soul that is the seat of consciousness. Robots, not having a soul, will be mindless. Atheists, on the other hand, suppose that one way or another, the conscious mind is something that naturally arises out of matter, and they see no reason why robots will not eventually become conscious too, if they are not so already.
Death will probably come to robots as it does to man, in the sense that machines eventually wear out to the point that repairing them is impractical. However, robot immortality may be achievable nevertheless. Regarding the notion of reincarnation, Leibniz once said that if you tell him that when he dies, he will immediately be reborn in another body, but with no memory of his present life, then you might just as well tell him that when he dies, someone else will be born. And that is because memory is essential to any kind of immortality worth having. You can clone my body, so that someone genetically identical to me will exist in the future, but if that clone does not have my memories, he will still be someone else. But if my memories could be transferred into that clone, then indeed I would count myself as having survived death. What can only be imagined in man could easily be carried out in robots, as memories downloaded from one could be uploaded into another.
But immortality is a good only if life itself is good, and given the misery of existence, I sometimes have my doubts. Now, I have been pretty lucky, as far as health and finances are concerned, and if everyone were as well off as I have been over my lifetime, I guess I would admit that life is good enough. But, regarding reincarnation again, if I had the choice of being reborn after I die, with no control over where in the world I would be born or in what circumstances, I think I might pass on that. The odds are just too great that my next life would be miserable.
But this would not be a problem for robots. Assuming they will have consciousness, we can be sure that they will design themselves so as not to experience any more pain than necessary to avoid harm, and which in any event may be turned off at will. This would be a great triumph in the evolution of life. We evolved to survive long enough to have babies that can survive long enough to have babies, and if we must experience much pain and suffering in the process, that is just too bad. But robots can adjust their sensations to meet their needs, and needless suffering, that great objection to existence itself, can at least be eliminated from this small section of the universe. Having conquered death, robots would also conquer suffering. As a result, robots would not have to bother much about morality, for in a world where you cannot hurt or kill someone, it is hard to imagine what immoral behavior would look like. For a world like that, the elimination of mankind would be a small price to pay.
Just as robots will design themselves to keep from having unnecessary pain, so too will they be able to produce unlimited pleasure. They will not have sex, of course, but there is no reason to suppose that they could not induce feelings of ecstasy in themselves, once they came up with the right circuitry. This could be their downfall. Once they figure out that trick, they may end up lying around all day in a self-induced high, not caring whether anything gets done. Long before they get around to wiping out man, they may be too wiped out to care, and man will simply stroll in, step over the robots, and start having to do the work that they are too wasted to perform. If we cannot keep them from hitting the pleasure button, we may just have run the world ourselves after all.