12/10/2024
It’s October 2024 AD...
and given that our robot overlords have yet to subjugate us, harvest our bodies for trace elements or got us to build their grandiose pyramids on Saturn… we can still make fun of them.
Yesterday Elon Musk, the multi-planetary electric car tycoon, a man of many talents…
(yet none apparently beating his astonishing ability to sire children with his female employees)
introduced the Robocab (smaller Cybertruck that unlike a Cybertruck, looks like an adult designed it)...
the Robovan (a person’s idea of mass transit, albeit that person never having actually travelled on the sweaty crime-ridden hellscape that are city buses nowadays)....
and finally Optimus.
OK… where to start… *sigh*
Optimus is finally the long-promised monkey butler, Rosey the Robot from the Jetsons finally made real, a creepy versatile humanoid that according to Mr Musk will be able to do your chores, be your friend and even look after your kids.
And now… an unpopular opinion incoming.
Every single one of those propositions to me is absolutely terrifying and the product of a low EQ mind.
OK so it will be able to do laundry and fold your clothes.
That in itself is interesting and not objectionable in itself.
Musk wants to decouple labour from economic gain.
He wants to have huge armies of robots working in factories, assembling Big Macs and propositioning tourists in red light districts.
"OK great so now we have no work to do and we can all paint and dance or whatever.:
Yes! It's amazing!
We'll have more to talk to each other and understand each other!
We can spend not just quality time, but more time with our kids and loved ones!
We can— oh wait...
Oh sorry… Elon wants the eradication of ALL labour, including emotional labour.
All the squishy awkward stuff that humans have to do that computers don’t.
This is what is terrifying to me.
And many will take the recommendation and actually have robots as friends and nannies.
But isn’t it the hard work, the arguments, the tears, the boredom, aren’t those the things that make relationships REAL?
That prevents all our interactions from other humans from being purely transactional?
What separates us from mindless automatons (yeah Skynet, I said it!)
Society will lose skills such as empathy and bond-building.
People will lose purpose and direction in life EVEN MORE THAN THEY DO NOW (sorry for shouting).
Does this create a world where people avoid hard emotional tasks, but they also lose personal growth and deep connection?
Humans might become passive spectators of life—with shiny robots filling all roles we associate with care, empathy, and responsibility.
Now… maybe this event was presented in this way because Musk has a weird attitude to his own family, and I certainly would not adopt his world view on child raising.
I would NEVER have a robot look after The Kid ®.
Imagine a future where the family robot spends more time with the kids than you do.
And the kids start to “love” it more than you.
They say it tells better Dad jokes than you.
That it understands them better than you.
The manufacturers of these robots will tell you that “Emotional labor, once burdensome, can now be outsourced. You are free to explore higher pursuits, free from mundane worries."
But to you… those worries, that ‘burden’—that’s where you connect.
When you hugged your daughter after her bad day, or when you folded her laundry and she saw you cared, that meant something.
Now they’re telling you to outsource it?
Nah. And anyone telling me anything different can clear off to Mars.
Have a good weekend.
Go and do something a robot could never do.
The name's Raju.
Steve Raju.
License To Quill. ®
