Evolution of robots denies anthropocentric theories
By: Viswa Narayanan
Tags: Flat Earth, Technology, Evolution, AI, Philosophy

Creationism, flat-Earth theory, geocentricity, and anthropocentricity are the major false conceptions from religions. Though the other three theories don't have so much of impact in human mind and behavior, the last one, anthropocentricity has impacted the way humans pursue the whole universe.

When we started to believe that everything in the universe is created for our wellbeing, we have grown selfish and greedy over the other living beings. When we say that Earth is a resourceful planet, it clearly shows our mentality that we see other living beings as resources to satisfy our own needs.

Anthropocentricity has been the reason for wars, slavery, cruelty against animals, famines, deforestation, extinction of several creatures, global pollutions and other man-made disasters. It is completely necessary to redefine our conceptions about the world. It is so required to accept and spread the theory of evolution throughout the planet.

When asking about the proof for theory of evolution, the way we conceptualised robots from the beginning has provided essential evidence about the behavior of life in the world.

Let's try it with a small thought experiment.

Close your eyes. Think about a car. Slowly, drive the car across a highway. Cross the large industries and technological companies. Take the road to your home. Reach your home. Park the car. Walk to your home. Open the door. Now there's a robot waiting for your orders right at your hall.

No matter what type of car, industries, roads, or house you would have imagined. Ultimately you would have imagined a humanoid that would take an order from you, when you had to imagine a robot.

That's where anthropocentricity begins in humans. When we look for a replacement to do our work, we literally imagine a person instead of imagining a process of replacement to our work.

This was the initial mentality when people thought that robots would replace humans at work. Movies such as “Terminator” essentially proved this mentality. As time progressed, as robotics started to take it's first steps into automation business, the robots where nothing but specialised machines to do the tasks rather than actual humanoids, which could do every task in a humanly manner.

As time progressed, as robotics evolved, we moved into concepts of AI as a set of softwares rather than creating a complex mechanical device, which could replicate the actions of human brain.

Today robotics is present in every industry. It is present as: rovers in exploration process, static machines in manufacturing process, as drones in security and defence works, and complex algorithm in automated cars, chatbots etc. Robots today are very specialised to do specific tasks. Hence, they take different forms. We don't need a humanoid to drive a car for us, or do a chat with us, or do an industrial process.

Every robot is specific, custom-made for its own purpose, and cannot be interchangeable with a robot specialized for some other task.

This being a reality, scientists in the recent past have realised the need for humanoids and started researching on them. The reason for the same being that specialised robots need specialised environment for their operations. Meanwhile, humanoids can provide agility, adaptability, and interoperability irrespective of the environment they work on.

So, if we have seen the evolution of robots in implementation, we could actually see the transformation of robots from basic forms designed for simple applications in a given work environment to sophisticated humanoids that could do complicated applications in various environments. Though the robots are evolved, the basic robots are still in existence due to their cost efficiency and application specifications.

It kind of reflects the theory of evolution in reality and shows us that the world is not created for humans, but humans have evolved from the basic creatures through various intermediate creatures, which may or may not exist today.

In another view, if we think about imaginations of robots, it is seen that we had started by imagining a humanoid and gradually drifted to application specific mechanical and software robots for specialised applications.

Both these conclusions intersect as evidences for anthropocentricity being a false conception about the world.