Re: My random thoughts
Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 2:37 pm
Here's a clip from the movie A.I. where obsolete androids scavenge a dumpsite for replacement parts to fix themselves.
Those androids are captured by humans and grotesquely destroyed at a nearby "flesh fair," for the amusement of other humans.
This sequence makes little sense to me, and I doubt it will ever be a routine occurrence. First, notice that even the obsolete androids are more skilled and physically able than the average human. If an android became hopelessly disabled, I could see it being thrown in a dumpster, but if it's still capable of doing work, it would make no sense to destroy it. Unless the humans are paying $1,000 per ticket to see the androids destroyed, the manager of the flesh fair would make more money reselling his captured androids to poorer people (including overseas) and small companies that couldn't afford the newest machines.
Second, notice that the androids are able to fix themselves. This means it makes even less economic sense to destroy them since the cost of fixing one of them is very low, and possibly zero dollars. Today, a car goes to the junkyard once it is "totaled," meaning the cost of fixing it exceeds its market value. A large part of that repair cost is the labor fee paid to the human mechanic who does the work. Subtract the latter from the equation, and it becomes more rare for a car to reach such a bad state that it is totaled.
So labor would be zero, but the costs of replacement parts would also drop. This is because androids would be able to identify the specific subcomponents within themselves that had broken, and to fix or replace just them. Unless a human is a master mechanic, he probably wouldn't have the same level of skill diagnosing the problem, and would stop at a more gross level of diagnosis by determining that a whole component was broken and needed replacement, even if only one subcomponent inside of it was in fact broken and all the other subcomponents were fine. The material cost of replacing the whole component is obviously higher. Analogously, imagine that a car engine stops working because one of its pistons cracks. An amateur mechanic would remove the whole engine and drop in a new one, whereas an experienced mechanic would know how to remove and replace just the one piston. A master mechanic might even know of some way to fix the cracked piston, so it wouldn't even need replacement.
Third, humans instinctively form emotional connections to things that resemble and behave like other humans, even if only coarsely. There are of course many sadists and psychopaths who are different, and so there will be many future instances where such people abuse and destroy androids, but you'll never be able to pack a stadium with people who want to see human-looking robots tortured and dismembered. In fact, I predict that more liberal countries will have laws against android cruelty from practically the first day androids are introduced into the real world.
In countries that don't have such laws, hurting and killing androids will still be socially frowned upon, and refuges and "underground railroads" for unwanted androids would arise.
Those androids are captured by humans and grotesquely destroyed at a nearby "flesh fair," for the amusement of other humans.
This sequence makes little sense to me, and I doubt it will ever be a routine occurrence. First, notice that even the obsolete androids are more skilled and physically able than the average human. If an android became hopelessly disabled, I could see it being thrown in a dumpster, but if it's still capable of doing work, it would make no sense to destroy it. Unless the humans are paying $1,000 per ticket to see the androids destroyed, the manager of the flesh fair would make more money reselling his captured androids to poorer people (including overseas) and small companies that couldn't afford the newest machines.
Second, notice that the androids are able to fix themselves. This means it makes even less economic sense to destroy them since the cost of fixing one of them is very low, and possibly zero dollars. Today, a car goes to the junkyard once it is "totaled," meaning the cost of fixing it exceeds its market value. A large part of that repair cost is the labor fee paid to the human mechanic who does the work. Subtract the latter from the equation, and it becomes more rare for a car to reach such a bad state that it is totaled.
So labor would be zero, but the costs of replacement parts would also drop. This is because androids would be able to identify the specific subcomponents within themselves that had broken, and to fix or replace just them. Unless a human is a master mechanic, he probably wouldn't have the same level of skill diagnosing the problem, and would stop at a more gross level of diagnosis by determining that a whole component was broken and needed replacement, even if only one subcomponent inside of it was in fact broken and all the other subcomponents were fine. The material cost of replacing the whole component is obviously higher. Analogously, imagine that a car engine stops working because one of its pistons cracks. An amateur mechanic would remove the whole engine and drop in a new one, whereas an experienced mechanic would know how to remove and replace just the one piston. A master mechanic might even know of some way to fix the cracked piston, so it wouldn't even need replacement.
Third, humans instinctively form emotional connections to things that resemble and behave like other humans, even if only coarsely. There are of course many sadists and psychopaths who are different, and so there will be many future instances where such people abuse and destroy androids, but you'll never be able to pack a stadium with people who want to see human-looking robots tortured and dismembered. In fact, I predict that more liberal countries will have laws against android cruelty from practically the first day androids are introduced into the real world.
In countries that don't have such laws, hurting and killing androids will still be socially frowned upon, and refuges and "underground railroads" for unwanted androids would arise.