BBC’s Towards Tomorrow Asked in 1967 Whether Humans and Robots Could Share One Culture Before the Line Between Them Vanished

Opening a BBC ‘Towards Tomorrow’ special first shown on December 28, 1967 is a warning that mankind may already be obsolete. Population growth, pollution and a planet slipping out of human control could finish the job even without nuclear war. Intelligent machines might have to take Earth off our hands, the narration says, if only to keep life going after we have made a mess of it.

Isaac Asimov, regarded as one of the leading prophets of the robot age, views the looming challenges with robots in a social rather than technological perspective. They’ll be moving out of science fiction and into factories and households, causing people to wonder how humans and machines will cohabit. First, he sees them as useful aides, then as friends with whom people may identify and look up. Asimov raises the question of whether we may end up making robots so much like people and humans so much like robots that the borders between the two become blurred, resulting in a common culture. Or is that the point at which humanity will eventually vanish and be replaced by a machine culture that does not resemble one but nevertheless appears to be human to an outside observer?

That idea is worlds apart from Sim One, a plastic and metal medical dummy created by Don Carter, a mechanical engineer at the University of Southern California. It is intended for use by anesthesia students because the eyes dilate from 1 to 8 millimeters, the lungs breathe at 18 breaths per minute, and the eyelashes close over the eyes. The teachers can turn off the computer-driven responses, allowing a pupil to practice intubation without endangering anyone. Carter concedes that Sim One only manages to duplicate a handful of the outer physical indications, and there is still a long way to go before we can even start to envisage a united civilization like Asimov’s.

Meanwhile, in Bethel, Connecticut, Unimation president Joseph Engelberger is assembling other machines and believes there is no reason to be concerned about a robot uprising. After all, every movement is guided by a human brain, therefore he sees no reason to give robots independent thought. Robots, in his opinion, are already subject to the same regulations as humans: they must perform their duties without deviating from the norm. He is aware of and follows Asimov’s three laws: a robot must neither injure a human or allow a human to be harmed by doing nothing, must obey human orders as long as they do not violate the first law, and will only look after itself provided they do not conflict with the first two. He believes that in the actual world, humans already follow those norms when they engage with robots.

Unimation’s industrial arms are already unloading die cast machines and will soon be welding autos. Engelberger believes that 50,000 of these robots will be in American factories within the next 20 years. Some will be controlled by a central computer, but the majority will rely on a human to tell them what to do. He believes that these computers will take on all of the nasty and repetitious tasks that people do not want to do, but he does not see them replacing the person who chooses what has to be done.

Domestic life appears to be becoming increasingly difficult, as furniture appears to move around on its own, cups end up in new and strange places, and that one good dusting from last week is all but forgotten the next day. Professor Meredith Thring of Queen Mary College is working on a rudimentary but intriguing table-clearing prototype in a house on the outskirts of Epping Forest. The crucial component is a photoelectric eye that detects a mug and activates a series of pressure sensors, which close in and pick it up with a mechanical hand. The hand then raises the mug onto a rotating tray, which transports it to a secure position. Thring has a vision: he wants intelligent engineers of all stripes, not just computer whiz kids, to pitch in and help put an end to the drudgery of household duties. He even hopes that in around ten years, we’ll have a full-fledged domestic machine with nice old-fashioned senses in its fingers and priced reasonably, like a car.