My first wife was a gadget lover, and every time we went to USA she came back with some new invention for her kitchen; if there was a robotic element she was very happy. She also had two robots for cleaning her floors [no I wasn’t one of them]. One was a wet cleaner for kitchen and bathrooms and the other was a dry cleaner for hardwood and synthetic floors. The present commercially available robots like vacuum cleaners are little more than drones capable of carrying out only one task. However at a recent convention, a panel of robotic experts has stated that within ten years there will be robots that can perform manifold tasks and also provide companionship for their owners.
But, to cap it all, they are now predicting that there will be paranoid robots in the near future, possibly as early as 2020. There is a film called ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ in which a depressed machine roams through space, but having them roam in our homes is a distressing thought. In about ten years scientists believe they can give robots their own emotions as they act independently, being capable of performing a variety of domestic tasks.
To do this they are giving robots emotions so that they can be motivated. If a robot feels happy after cleaning a dirty carpet then it will apparently seek out more dirt to cleanse and thus feel the same. It could of course throw dirt on the carpet so it could keep cleaning, but I don’t expect the experts have thought of that paranoia! We now have e-mail addiction where people send themselves an e-mail if after a few minutes their in-tray is empty.
It seems that “human emotions are a series of electrical and chemical signals that are interpreted by our brains to produce a particular feeling. This emotion then drives a series of decisions about what to do next.” Likewise when a robot is shown a toy it will become happy and smile, when surprised it will cower and exhibit fear. By creating frustration when doing difficult tasks it will seek out alternative methods, while boredom will motivate it to new tasks. The feeling of hunger will make it realise it needs recharging.
If lawless and decadent mankind gives robots emotions they will resemble mankind by 2020. We could have a disintegrating society where people and robots have emotions out of control. It is already present in some of our teenagers who will be part of that scientific body — it won’t take long to encode such disorder into the robotic race.
For those who can see clearly, there is gloom over the state of the nations from a moral, spiritual, ethical and political perspective. When people come to church they want their aspirations lifted.
They want to enter a place and a phase of praise and worship that takes them away from the reality of a declining nation which offers them very little hope for spiritual advancement or moral rectitude. Public idols in sport, entertainment and politics compromise moral standards, and bend the rules of decency and right living. There is self-pleasing and double-talk on every hand.
Humanistic governments set little example before young people, and the proliferation of broken homes, single parent families, divorce, over emphasis on same-sex marriage, drunkenness and out-of-wedlock pregnancies is disheartening, and establishes an environment where growing young people can find little of value in the morals and standards of some of their political leaders. It’s not unusual therefore to find depression on the rise in younger people and an increase in neurosis. They are confused by doubtful and double standards.
Our godless society is force-feeding our children into adulthood denying them the innocence that they need to be rational well-ordered people; their emotions are out of sync with expectations and reality. An approved psychiatrist has just released a book into the educational community advising our children about the advantages of anal and oral sex so they can have sexual experience without becoming pregnant. The mind is flabbergasted at such an abomination. Humans make love face to face; it is only animals that differ. Thus our children will be taught experience without maturity to discern propriety.
Our only answer is to declare our Christian heritage and standard. To set before our children and teenagers what Christ expects of us, and how we should react in circumstances contrary to morality, good behaviour and decency. They should be brought up in a godly atmosphere where at home and at church they see enacted a level of purity and lifestyle that will wash over them in the ordinary things of life. Perhaps then our robots will learn virtue!
