Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The MIT Media Lab researcher and robot ethicist offers an optimistic look at our future with robots based on our historical relationships with animals.
People name their robot vacuum cleaners and feel bad for them when they get stuck. Participants in workshops refuse to strike baby dinosaur robots. Soldiers have been reported to risk their lives to save the robots they work with. Broken robot dogs get funerals.
The New Breed chronicles the past, present, and future of our relationships to animals to create a compelling vision of what our robotic future could look like. Darling argues that if we harness technology like we've harnessed animals in the past, we will start to see massive potential for new kinds of practices, achievements, and even relationships with machines--for the benefit of individuals and society at large.
As consumer robotics investment booms and human-robot interaction increasingly enters into workplaces and households all over the world, much space has been devoted to talking about robots as replacements for humans. The New Breed looks at our rich legal and cultural history of using animals for weaponry, work, and companionship to considers how people and machines will work together.
Synopsis
For readers of THE SECOND MACHINE AGE or THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots--inspired by how we interact with animals--could be the key to making our future with robotic technology work.
There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don't leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement - rather than replace - our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future.
A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems and how we relate - not just to non-humans, but also to each other.
Synopsis
For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots--inspired by how we interact with animals--could be the key to making our future with robotic technology work.
There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don't leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement--rather than replace--our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future.
A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems and how we relate--not just to non-humans, but also to each other.