I always had a car that I steered myself. If the past is an indicator of the future this will change. My car will steer itself. The idea makes me nervous.
But in general I am not opposed to automation. I love our robot vacuum cleaner. He (I think it’s a he) goes by the name of Bob. Just let Bob loose in a room. Thirty minutes later the floor is dust- and doghair-free and Bob has rolled himself into his charger unit, awaiting further orders. Now, that beats the way I used to do housework.
One chore I particularly disliked was to clean the oven with a certain super caustic spray. A notice on the container implied that one should not allow this product to touch anything, including the oven I suppose. No more of this nonsense. We now have an oven that cleans itself if you just move a lever on the door an inch to the left. The job takes a few hours but it is worth the wait. The only drawback is that you are left with a heap of ashes. Something funereal about this.
I don’t have much use for department store doors that open as I approach but I can see their usefulness at Christmas time when one has all three arms full of packages. On the other hand, I do like my automatic garage door, the one that self-stops on closing when any impediment such as a child or a dog is in danger of being crushed. This could be helpful. I should have tested this on Betsie, our toy poodle, but I did not have the nerve. Lights that turn on when they sense some movement are very popular. They even come on when so much as a leaf blows by. Or when you yourself tiptoe by, hoping not to be heard by the neighbor’s sleeping Weimaraner.
I have my doubts about alarms that are supposed to go on when there is smoke. Mine has never spoken yet except once when I forgot I had some butter melting in the skillet. I smelled that out in the garden before I ever heard the thing beep.
As a writer I love the computer software that automatically checks my spelling. I am not much of a photographer. I am grateful to the person who invented my self-focusing camera. I am the cook in my family and I truly appreciate toaster ovens, microwave ovens, rice cookers, and such that are semi-automatic. They turn themselves on if you set the time. If you forget this step the raw rice will be sitting there waiting patiently when you come home at dinner time. I speak from experience.
But all of these helpful appliances are still robots at best, devices that do what they are programmed to do. They have no brains, no intelligence of their own. They cannot make decisions as to what I should cook, for example, and how to cook and season it. The camera can only focus my picture. It cannot tell me if I am taking a picture of the right thing. That takes thinking. What is missing is artificial intelligence, a subject that is much discussed these days. Given the fact that even regular intelligence is rare enough, I suspect that AI still has a long way to go. That is why I would draw the line when it comes to self driving, life and death split second decision making cars.
For now I would set my goal a little lower. One morning not long ago I went on my morning walk. My oatmeal was not quite ready, so I had turned the burner off as I left. On my return I was surprised that the fire department had not been summoned because my house was filled with black smoke. That is why I can’t wait for artificial intelligence to come to the kitchen. I badly need an intelligent cook pot, one that “perceives its environment and takes appropriate action,” to use the language of the experts in this field. A pot that would have seen that I had accidentally turned the burner dial on HIGH instead OFF, a pot that would have made an intelligent adjustment.
I have a new pot now, but it is not any smarter. Neither am I, alas. Just the other day I went through a stop sign that I knew was there. I just did not perceive it. Maybe that intelligent car would be of help, after all.
(c)2018 by Herbert H. Hoffman. Picture credit: ICORTECHNOLOGY.COM