The Evolution of Robotic Consciousness in Society and the Media: Part 1

Until recently, sophisticated robots have been a thing of the imagination. Since the 1920s, the rapid evolution of robots has meant that today the sight of robots being integrated into our society is no longer a futuristic thought, fathomed only in films and books, but rather an eventual reality. Below in Figure 1 is a timeline of robotics evolution in our society, showing the immense progress made. 

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Robots were first formally introduced to society as an expression of imagination in 1920, in the science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) written by Karel Čapek. This play introduced the word “robot” to the English language and quickly became influential, being translated into thirty languages by 1923, as highlighted by Koreis in 2013.

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Čapek was an extraordinarily forward thinking in this respect, as he not only introduced robots to the world but also predicted future advances in robotics, and initiated the fear of robotics, which has continued to appear in popular culture throughout the last 100 years. To say Čapek was a big player in the robotic fever that has swept the media since their imaginative birth is an understatement – aside from the physical role, he also had a very advanced vision in terms of their seemingly conscious ability to think for themselves and decide to revolt against the humans that enslaved them. 

Here it is appropriate to introduce the idea of living and consciousness. A ‘living thing’ relates to any organism that possesses or shows the characteristics of being alive. The fundamental characteristics include organised structure, requiring energy, responding to stimuli, adapting to environmental changes, being capable of reproduction, growth, movement, metabolism and death. Since their invention robots have had organised structure, required energy and had the ability to move. Such characteristics were seen in the first physical robot, Eric (figure 1), and have evolved to respond to stimuli and learn from it – a fundamental characteristic of living. This idea of learning could also be seen as a form of growth, rather than that of typical proliferation. An area of life that robots are not advanced in is reproduction; currently we are the master of robots and AI, but as they continue to become more and more intelligent, we may give them the tools to be able to build other robots. Effectively allowing robots to reproduce. 

Currently, living things are classified into three domains – bacteria, archaebacteria and eukaryotes, however with the development of robots, their immense progression and potential to develop consciousness, could a new domain be upon us? But an artificial rather than natural one? Although this is a far-fetched idea, it has happened before with abiogenesis, the natural process in which life emerged from inanimate beginnings, so has the potential to happen again. 

Moving onto the more difficult topic of consciousness, there are many debates on when and if true consciousness will ever be possessed by a man-made machine. Turing, the inventor of the consciousness test, thought that by the year 2000 computer systems would be able to pass the test with flying colours, whereas Ada Lovelace, a famous mathematician and writer stated that “the computer will never be creative or intelligent by itself; it can only what we tell it to do”. However, people today mainly agree it is very likely to happen in our lifetime. The intelligence spoken of in terms of consciousness is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Aiming to bring robots into the realms of consciousness has meant making or attempting to make them ‘intelligent’; bringing about, the now huge field of, artificial intelligence (AI). Which can be seen in our everyday lives with its integration into mobile phones e.g. Siri and personalised ads.

To this end, the future prospects of robots is endless, an ideal that has been reflected repeatedly in the media – mainly in films and tv shows. This is the area that I will be unpacking in the next article, discussing the evolution of robotics and how it has followed a theme predicted in the science fiction area of the media. 

Where to find out more:

• R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
• Introduction of the word robot: https://www.worldcat.org/title/asimov-on-science-fiction/oclc/6815214
• Koreis article: https://web.archive.org/web/20131223084729/http:/www.booksplendour.com.au/capek/rur.htm
• Abiogenesis: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsob.120190
• Turing: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing