Why do humans want to build robots? It seems, on the face of it, to be a suicidal endeavour, destroying jobs and, ultimately, rendering our species redundant as more intelligent and effective beings take over. Lacking, as we now do, an agreed metaphysical justification for human specialness — for example, the soul — it must only be a matter of time before we submit to the machine ascendancy.
So far, it has been a subtle, incremental process that conceals any wider significance. Take satellite navigation. This was first introduced in the 1980s and is now more or less universal. Maps have become quaint. As a result, we walk or drive without a visual model of where we are. This may be a small loss of human agency but it’s a loss nonetheless.
Driverless cars may turn out to be a less subtle, more spectacular example. The UK has permitted road testing, as have many American states.
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