My robot vacuum is on the blink. I’ll just have to suck it up but is tech taking over?
Every morning, before I have my first coffee of the day and attempt Wordle, I empty the dishwasher. And every morning I curse the dull repetition of this boring task.
It’s one of those jobs like filling your car up with petrol, or cooking, cleaning, tidying and ironing, that I hate doing. I long to be relieved of this routine but getting another member of the family to help is about as likely as having my very own robot to do the dirty work.
But, hang on, that may not be as outlandish as it sounds. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has just unveiled the prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus. The electric car maker is aiming to mass produce in the millions and sell for less than £18,000.
At its launch, the prototype was wheeled on stage and people were shown a video of the robot carrying out simple tasks like watering plants and carrying boxes. It also waved at the audience, which I find profoundly creepy.
Musk said there is still a lot of work to be done, but added: “I think Optimus is going to be incredible in five or 10 years, like mind-blowing.”
But can it empty the dishwasher? If so I’m making a down payment right now. Heck, I’ll order two.
Musk believes the artificial intelligence bots will replace workers on the Tesla production line within a decade. He argues that these robots could even lead to a “fundamental transformation of civilisation as we know it”.
He says that in the future they could do a whole range of tasks from looking after the elderly to working as domestic assistants. Essentially, you’d only have to do physical tasks if you wanted to.
But what effect would that have? We’re already becoming lazier and lazier as technology gets more sophisticated. If we don’t even have to do menial tasks we’ll become pretty helpless. And what happens to all the workers who are going to be replaced? Musk and others like him offer a brave new world, but it is not without its problems.
I can’t help thinking of the dystopian future imagined in the children’s film Wall-e, where the entire human race has been reduced to obese squidgy sacks of loose bones because their servant robots do everything for them. People don’t even converse other than through computer scenes directly in front of their faces.
Don’t get me wrong, of course I realise the benefits of the incredible techy breakthroughs we have seen over the last few decades. I’m not a complete Luddite. I was talking to a surgeon recently who was telling me about a surgical innovation called the Da Vinci System which enables doctors to operate on a patient using robotic hands. They
don’t even need to be in the same room as the patient. It’s incredible.
We should be careful what we wish for, though, in terms of little robot helpers for around the house. My husband got me a robotic vac for a present last year, which I initially ranked about as highly as the cookbook he got me once. But I grew to love it and named it after my very industrious and energetic twin sister.
Helen was great for a while. She worked incredibly hard, didn’t stop for breaks and I liked to think she was happy. But the honeymoon period didn’t last and pretty soon she was sloping off like a difficult teenager and couldn’t be found for hours. Eventually she refused to work more than a few seconds at a time. She wasn’t even in a union. I guess she had just had enough. She sits redundant in the kitchen corner now, a sad reminder of the good times we had.
At least we didn’t end up like one Edinburgh family I heard about it, although I’m not sure how much of an urban myth this has become.
They had bought a vacuum with the same high hopes I had. They set it up and left it whirring around the kitchen as they headed to bed, smug in the knowledge that their home would be sparkling by morning.
Unfortunately, they left their nervy cat in the same room. It took fright at this strange object and had a little accident.
Shall I just leave it to your imagination to work out what happened next? Suffice to say it wasn’t a pretty sight.
If we don’t have to do menial tasks we’ll become pretty helpless