The Robot Revolution

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sizes of fish in a catch, then separate them into various bins with its mechanical arm. The company is developing similar robots to process fruits and vegetables.

And there is more. Care for the afflicted? Quadriplegics may some day use spoken commands to order robot servants to do their bidding. Other designers are working on a robot that could gently lift up a bedridden patient, while a nurse changes his sheets, and tuck him back into bed. M.I.T. Computer Scientist Marvin Minsky visualizes a day, about 20 or 25 years from now, when a surgeon will be able to slip on a pair of special gloves connected by remote control to a pair of mechanical hands that can perform surgery for him in a hospital hundreds of miles away. Fighting crime? The Advanced Robotics Corp. is advertising a mechanical sentinel that can speed to the site of any breakin, sternly ask an intruder, "What are you doing here?" and temporarily blind him with its spotlight while its siren calls for help.

But can robots wash the dishes? Of course, say the engineers. Unimation's Engelberger, for that matter, is outfitting his office with a robot that will make and serve coffee to his guests. Fredkin of M.I.T. visualizes the household robot as a creature that could not only do all the chores but also chase away burglars, "preferably by crouching in a dark corner and growling like a large dog." But does the ordinary homeowner want to pay $50,000 to get the kitchen sink cleaned up? "Actually, homes are a complicated environment for robots," says one expert in Washington. "You'd have to build a robot that is 100 times more complicated than today's industrial robots for one-tenth the cost."

These are, furthermore, the service jobs that are supposed to be reserved in the future for the factory workers retrained out of the robot-run assembly lines. But wherever there is drudgery, the robot stands ready to move in. Says Westinghouse's Clark: "If a robot can do the job, a man shouldn't be doing it anyway."

This idea that man is destined for higher things than work—not necessarily a realistic idea or even a meritorious one—provides the green light at the end of the pier. Says Albus: "The robot revolution will free human beings from the pressures of urbanization and allow them to choose their own life-styles from a much wider variety of possibilities."

British Agriculture Minister Peter Walker suggests an even more heady vision: "Uniquely in history, we have the circumstances in which we can create Athens without the slaves."

Such speculations raise com plex questions of social organization, starting with the matter of the wages paid for work done. If more and more work is done by robots, more and more people will eventually be living on some form of subsidy. Whether this takes the prestigious form of, say, long-term free education or the disdained form of welfare payments is a problem computers are already puzzling over.

Traditionally, earned wages define a person's worth, in his own eyes as well as in those of his neighbors. But there is no law that this must be so.

The millionaire, the soldier, the vagabond and the poet all have other ways of judging their value. Says Science-Fiction Soothsayer Isaac Asimov: "Robots will leave to human beings the tasks that are