Word: humanizing
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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This idea that man is destined for higher things than work-not necessarily a realistic idea or even a meritorious one-provides the green light at the end of the pier. Says Albus: "The robot revolution will free human beings from the pressures of urbanization and allow them to choose their own life-styles from a much wider variety of possibilities...
...millionaire, the soldier, the vagabond and the poet all have other ways of judging their value. Says Science-Fiction Soothsayer Isaac Asimov: "Robots will leave to human beings the tasks that...
...intrinsically human, such as sports, entertainment, scientific research." The value of many things will eventually change, since every thing made by machine will come to seem commonplace and everything made by hand, even a pair of knitted socks, will acquire the quality of rarity...
...guide all these potential changes will require a degree of ethical judgment and social organization that humanity has rarely shown any sign of possessing. Just as the computer itself derives, however, from the simple proposition that all mathematical logic can be reduced to various combinations of zero and one, these revolutionary upheavals in human society are clearly vis ible in the distance. Indeed, they can be seen already in the birdlike contraptions that poke their fiery beaks into the un finished steel frames at the Jefferson plant in East Detroit...
Webster's definition of a robot begins by describing it as "a machine in the form of a human being that performs the mechanical functions of a human being." Today's robotmakers, however, are devoting very little thought to creating anything that looks or acts human. It is perfectly possible to design a robot that walks on artificial legs or speaks fluent English, but it is much cheaper and more efficient to keep the robot standing in one place and to speak to it in the soothing language of algorithms. Says David Nitzan of SRI International...