Technology | If bots take over, should we stop learning?

Tesla Bot is humanoid robot powered by the company's vehicle AI

Recently at Tesla’s presentation on artificial intelligence, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said that he is working on creating a bot to do ‘dangerous, repetitive, and boring tasks so that humans don't have to’. Profound, right? Imagine humanoids doing tasks that were unnecessary or time consuming.

Adding further, he said, ‘in the future, physical work will be a choice.’ Now those who’ve been dismissing his ideas must know that bots are already occupying our worlds through cell phones and smart gadgets every day. Several stock markets are run by robots, human cashiers are replaced by self-service kiosks and driverless cars will be here in no time. Recently, pop band ABBA announced that their upcoming concert will have their digital avatars (Abbatars, as they call it) with them looking younger in all their 1970s glory — something that will change the future of live concerts.

The Future Is Here

Not too long ago, we spoke of how the workplace would be reimagined with automation and 3D avatars. In no time, virtual meets became mainstream because of COVID-19-related lockdowns and now Facebook has launched Horizon Workrooms with high-tech features for a different kind of productivity experience. Soon enough, there’ll be other products and solutions, and your next meeting could be attended by your impeccable looking avatar (why groom, right?).

For the long run, Musk thinks we’ll need a Universal Basic Income (UBI) because humanoids might take the place of jobs that people are currently getting paid for. What if the need to do jobs disappears altogether? The idea that robots could make employment optional — and a monthly paycheque lands in your account — sounds fantastic.

Assuming a future that looks like sci-fi movies, we’d all end up with plenty of time on our hands to do, well nothing. Is that really a good thing? Should we also stop learning because there would be no more work to do? Not really, because learning is a brain exercise that allows you to pause, regenerate energy and improve yourself. When you stop learning, you stop growing. In fact, we’d be left to live a life without an aim or ambition. To not work hard towards fulfilling a dream, or to not find the joy in doing the little things, in meeting people, in interacting, for real — we’d face an existential dilemma if we didn't have to work anymore. In such a scenario, what exactly would we do?

Never Stop Learning

Sure enough the positives are plenty. By eliminating the need for people to work, maybe the robots would free us up to focus on things that really makes us human? Besides avoiding ‘dangerous’ tasks would put an end to the risk involved in defusing a bomb or would make a differently-abled person’s life easy.

Computers can do things that require logic, but logic is only one part of the human mind; where would that leave empathy, creativity, judgment, and critical thinking? Our curiosity and the penchant to learn that keeps us alive would vanish. It’s different when you actually feel the pain, the tears, the fears, the sorrow and the joy — it is what makes us human. Perhaps, what makes us more human is our constant will to learn something new.

In the 2009 Sci-Fi thriller Surrogates, there’s a futuristic, dystopian society where clones and robots do everything humans can. For years the main characters kept getting old while their clones remain young and dynamic. One day, when the system collapses, these clones drop dead in broad daylight. That’s when people come out of their home, experiencing sunlight and greeting each other for real after a very long time. It feels surreal. Let’s hope this fiction never becomes a fact. In search of instant gratification, it is imperative to not lose out on the real deal — you! All things considered, when someday automation does indeed replace labour and there's plenty of everything, time included, at our disposal, would we still need it?

In such superfluous abundance, should we then just march into a ‘future of work by choice’, purely on the grounds that we can? Would we rather not ask, ‘where’s the joy?’

Prateek Chatterjee is Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications & Marketing, NIIT Limited.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.