We must also recognize, and respond to, the fact that the United States is a very different cultural and social setting for a robotics and intelligent machines industry, compared to our major technological competitor, Japan. It is hard for Americans to appreciate sufficiently the cultural enthusiasm that exists for robots in Japan. Robots are uniformly heroes when they appear in popular Japanese cartoons and films. Robotics expositions in Japan have drawn upwards of a quarter of a million attendees, with nearly a quarter of these being children, who are dragging their parents to see the robots. By contrast, in the United States, our society has a more ambiguous view of robots.
Robots often appear in our films as menacing figures, or even as villains.
Such cultural differences in how a technology is viewed can affect the development of a national industry related to that technology. For example, Germany has yet to develop a world-class biotechnology industry, despite its prowess in related industries such as specialty chemicals and process engineering. Observers both inside and outside Germany point to a German cultural unease with recombinant DNA research as an important contributing factor in holding them back. The fact that the U.S. society takes a more critical stance toward robots and intelligent machines leads me to my next point. Any U.S. initiative on robotics and intelligent machines needs to include studies of the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in the development and dissemination of such technologies.