This week's prompt reminded me of a wonderful animation movie I saw recently, The Wild Robot. I won't waste too much space narrating what happened in the movie but I will pick out how a do-it-all robot can affect our lives according to the movie.
Firstly, robots can be a wonderful help. Having a robot handling house cores means we have free time for other important life pursuits. In the movie, the lost robot - which can only function fully when assigned a task - handled its cores perfectly. Funnily, after an accident, the chore it was assigned was the hardest of all, which was to nurture a newly hatched gosling to maturity. Honestly, that in itself is a tough ask for a human not to talk of a robot.
One of the first things the robot did was to get shelter in the wild for itself and the gosling. While the other animals burrowed into the soil or lived in trees or under tree trunks, the robot designed a shelter with all the immediate provisions to raise a youngling. Considering that taking care of kids is one of the toughest responsibilities out there having a robot that could do it all won't be a bad idea at all.
Another thing we gain from acquiring a do-it-all robot is an improved quality of life. Robots are programmed to go to extreme lengths that humans are wired to desire but lazy enough to acquire. With robots handling the cleaning and organization of the home, a high-quality environment is certain. Aside from that, robots tasked with cooking for kids will spoil those kids rotten with wonderful food choices. In The Wild Robot, that gosling, Brightbill, had a pick of whatever it wanted to it. The robot provided the best of delicacies for Brightbill and it had rapid growth more than its age mates who had to rely on their biological mothers, and later, themselves, for feeding.
Now, to the hard part. Robots can help build, but they can also gradually destroy. The most apparent effect of robot dependence is how it might affect human relationships and community dynamics. Brightbill had most of the luxury it wanted, but she never had friends. Everyone in the goose community detested and ran away from the goose that was raised, acted and talked like a robot. The goose never had the required skill to foster relationships amongst its kin.
Also, having robots do all our cores will lead to over-reliance on them. So what happens to us if the robots a infected with a virus or shut down? We will be in some deep shit. Brightbill found that out firsthand when she saw her mates swimming and tried to do the same. She nearly drowned and needed a last-minute saving grace from the robot to prevent her from turning into an afternoon snack for a hungry crocodile. Over-reliance on robots will ruin us all - especially if the robot were to go rogue.
Conclusively, finding a balance between leveraging technology and maintaining our social skills and connections is the way to go. We can afford to leave it all to robots. What if they grew emotional and decided to take over our homes?
