A question that I have been starting to get when I tell people I’m studying artificial intelligence is “Will robots take over the world?”  It even came up in a panel discussion of AI professors in one of my classes the other week.  The common response to this question is, “why would they want to?”  Just because there are some humans who would like to take over the world, there is no need for us to program these desires into robots.  For that matter, will we give robots desires and motivations at all?  Or will they be no more than a very advanced toaster?

I think the taking over the world question can be looked at in two ways.  First, there have been individuals who wanted to take over the world: Napoleon, Hitler, etc.  If we are actually creating robots with consciousness and desires and everything, then I suppose there is a chance one will have this desire as people have in the past.  The chances of us creating robots like this is probably slim, and if we do then all the rest of the robots would surely be trying to stop the one crazy one just like how humans would try to stop another human from taking over the world.

The second view of taking over the world is as a group.  Humans have essentially taken over the world.  We cover most of the land mass on the planet and do to it whatever we want (mostly pollute it terribly).  Other animals commonly expand their populations to the maximum that their environment can hold.  Again, if we gave the robots the ability to procreate and have offspring then this might happen.  But it is a very large step from having robots to do work for us to giving them consciousness and desires and the ability to procreate.

So no, I don’t think robots are going to take over the world in either sense of the question.  For this to happen would require us to create sentient, procreating beings which I don’t imagine happening any time soon.