Any sort of return to the past is, of course, impossible. It is doubtful that men could, even if they wanted to, stop the great flood of technical knowledge that science is now producing. We all must now face the fact that the kind of world we used to live in, even so recently as 1939, is gone. There now exist weapons and machines so powerful and dangerous in the wrong hands that in a day or two most of the people of the earth could be put to death. Giant brains are closely related to at least two of these weapons: scientists have already used mechanical brains for solving problems about atomic explosives and guided missiles. In addition, thinking mechanisms designed for the automatic control of gunfire were an important part of the winning of World War II. They will be a still more important part of the fighting of any future war.
Nor can we escape to another part of the earth which the new weapons will not reach. At 300 miles an hour, any spot on earth can be reached from any other in less than 48 hours. A modern plane exceeds this speed; a rocket or guided missile doubles or trebles it.
Nor can we trust that some kind of good luck will pull us through and help men to escape the consequences of what men do. Both Frankenstein and Domin reaped in full the consequences of what they did. The history of life on this earth that is recorded in the rocks is full of evidence of races of living things that have populated the earth for a time and then become extinct, such as the dinosaurs. In that long history, rarely does a race survive. In our own day, insects and fungi rather than men have shown fitness to survive and spread over the earth: witness the blight that destroyed the chestnut trees of North America, in spite of the best efforts of scientists to stop it.
There seems to be no kind of escape possible. It is necessary to grapple with the problem: How can we be safe against the threat of physical harm from robot machines?
UNEMPLOYMENT
The other chief threat from robot machines is against our economic life. Harry Domin, in R.U.R., you remember, prophesied: “All work will be done by living machines.” As an example, in the magazine Modern Industry for Feb. 15, 1947, appeared a picture of a machine for selling books, and under the picture were the words:
Another new product in robot salesmen—Latest in the parade of mechanical vending machines is this book salesman.... It is designed for use in hospitals, rail terminals, and stores. It offers 15 different titles, selected manually, and obtained by dropping quarter in slot. Cabinet stores 96 books.
Can you feel the breath of the robot salesman, workman, engineer,——, on the back of your neck?
At the moment when we combine automatic producing machinery and automatic controlling machinery, we get a vast saving in labor and a great increase in technological unemployment. In extreme cases, perhaps, the effect of robot machines will be the disappearance of men from a factory. Such a factory will be like a modern power plant that turns a waterfall into electricity: once the machinery is installed, only one watchman is ordinarily needed. But, in most cases, this will be the effect: in a great number of factories, mines, farms, etc., the labor force needed will be cut by a great proportion. The effect is not different in quality, because the new development is robot machinery; but the amount of technological unemployment coming from robot machines is likely to be considerably greater than previously.
The robot machine raises the two questions that hang like swords over a great many of us these days. The first one is for any employee: What shall I do when a robot machine renders worthless all the skill I have spent years in developing? The second question is for any businessman: How shall I sell what I make if half the people to whom I sell lose their jobs to robot machines?