OPINION > TECHNOLOGY

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR

OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

‘Killer robots’ and AI’s ‘dirty

little secret’: Many people
prefer robots over humans
BY ROGER J. COCHETTI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR -
01/07/23 11:00 AM ET

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It was a busy weekend at the local

supermarket, and lines were forming at
checkout. Around a half-dozen people lined
up at the automated checkout registers when
I noticed there was no line at the checkout
where a human cashier was waiting. When a
customer approached the checkout area,
they scanned the options and decided to
wait in line for the automated checkout
instead of walking right up to the cashier with
no wait. I could not resist asking the
customer why they chose to wait for a
machine instead of getting immediate
service from a human. Their response carries
an important message for the future of
artificial intelligence (AI) and the robots it
enables: “I don’t want them (the human
cashier) looking at everything that I’m
buying, and I don’t care for their opinions of
what I’m getting.”

(Author’s note: Throughout this column, I

intentionally conflate the terms “robot” and
“drone” and often ignore the difference
between a robot that is remote-controlled by
a human and a robot that is AI-enabled, and
thus to some degree autonomous. There
probably was a time — decades ago — when
these terms described distinct “remote-
controlled” or “AI-enabled/autonomous”
categories, but there is little difference
today, as remote control and AI merge — and
less as each day passes.)

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While surveys on automated supermarket

checkout are limited and diverse, it’s clear
that people are divided in their views toward
robot cashiers — about a third prefer robots
over humans, for various reasons. Similarly,
bank ATMs (robot tellers, in a sense) have
been widespread for a half-century, but were
preferred by some from the outset — and are
preferred over human tellers by a wide
margin today.   Perhaps more relevant, a
recent survey of New Yorkers showed that
while most preferred more thorough traffic
enforcement, 59 percent preferred speed
cameras — robot traffic cops — over human
police officers and 65 percent of Blacks and
74 percent of Latinos preferred robot speed
cops over human traffic police.

It’s clear that a substantial element of the

public prefers to deal with robots instead of
human cashiers, tellers and cops. While some
of this has to do with minimizing time
consumed, some has to do with the obvious
fact that humans are opinionated, while
machines often leave the impression they are
not.

In reality, while the shopper I interviewed

preferred a robot cashier over a human
cashier because they believed the machine
would have no memory/opinion, many
readers will immediately scoff that the robot
cashier actually keeps a closer watch on the
customer than does the human — and the
robot never forgets.

Nonetheless, machines can leave a different

impression.

Nor would it be surprising if we learned that

victims of Nazi oppression or of Jim Crowe
would have preferred (presumably-neutral)
robot police to (bigoted) human police.

This phenomenon — of some people

preferring robots (in this case, an apparently-
neutral robot over an opinionated human)
becomes more important as we enter an era
of AI-enabled robots. And it may partly
explain why AI-enabled robots enjoy public
support despite warning from prominent
figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to
former Google boss Eric Schmidt about the
risks of unfettered AI. If someone suspects
that opinionated-humans in authority intend
to do them or their family harm, then that
person will probably prefer an apparently
neutral, AI-enabled robot over an obviously
bigoted human. 

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As we recently saw in San Francisco,

however, when a robot is equipped to
physically harm a human (robots inflict
financial, emotional and other harms on
humans every day, but this rarely raises a
public outcry), an entirely different set of
public attitudes emerge. In this case, local
police officials and officers proposed to use
armed robots to violently deal with suspects
in situations where human police officers and
civilians would be in imminent deadly
danger. Many human police prefer to deploy
robot police over human officers in such
situations; nonetheless, opposition was loud
and immediate against “killer robots.”

Preferring robots (or drones as they are

sometimes called) over humans has been a
growing view of military commanders for
decades. Military aviation commanders have
preferred robot-piloted aircraft
(surveillance/combat drones) over human-
piloted aircraft for the same reason human
police sometimes prefer robots to human
officers: avoiding the loss of human life on
your own side. Moreover, compared with
human pilots, robot pilots cost less and don’t
sleep or have families — and they will
unquestioningly commit suicide or submit to
extreme conditions that no human could
survive. For these same reasons, naval
commanders are introducing robot surface
and underwater warships that involve no on-
board sailors and the first generation of robot
ground combat vehicles is now being
promoted by army commanders.

Each major episode of military combat, from

WWII through Ukraine, has seen a steady
increase in the use of combat robots, and it is
widely reported that combat robots are
playing a principal warrior role in Ukraine
today.

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Although there is no agreed definition of AI,

almost all involved in it today would agree
that AI involves some type of machine
learning in which a computer-like device is
able, by itself, to adjust to evolving
conditions by taking these conditions into
account and responding to the changed
conditions. By this type of definition, nearly
all remote-controlled robots/drones are
evolving into autonomous robots — if for no
other reason than that human commanders,
officials and executives conclude that, in net,
robots cost less than humans. As they do, the
reasons why some people will prefer a robot
to a person will become more pronounced
and more controversial.

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We are entering an era in which the use of AI-

enabled robots — whether they are labeled
“drones,” “autonomous vehicles” or “updated
supermarket check-out machines” — will be
widespread because some people prefer
such robots to humans, for economic, social,
personal, military or other reasons, while
other people strenuously object to dealing
with such robots.

If any one thing is clear, it is that we are

intellectually unprepared for both this era
and the debate that it will spur.

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Roger Cochetti  provides consulting and

advisory services in Washington, D.C. He was
a senior executive with Communications
Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) from 1981
through 1994. He also directed internet public
policy for IBM from 1994 through 2000 and
later served as Senior Vice-President & Chief
Policy Officer for VeriSign and Group Policy
Director for CompTIA. He served on the State
Department’s Advisory Committee on
International Communications and
Information Policy during the Bush and
Obama administrations, has testified on
internet policy issues numerous times and
served on advisory committees to the FTC
and various UN agencies. He is the author of
the  Mobile Satellite Communications
Handbook.

TAGS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE ARMS RACE BIAS CONSUMER DATA
PRIVACY DATA PRIVACY DRONE STRIKE DRONES
HUMAN–ROBOT INTERACTION KILLER ROBOTS
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY POLICE PREJUDICE ROBOTS
SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY

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