Human Beings and Robots: Towards a Symbiosis? A 2000 People Survey

In this paper we address the question of how robots and information technologies are changing our lives and to which extent people are ready to share their life and their body with robots. We present the results of a comprehensive survey with more than two thousand participants which allows for a statistically well founded discussion of the questions of interest: in the so-called information society, are we going to evolve in symbiosis with computer technologies? If yes, is there a limit to what we can accept? 1. THE INFORMATION SOCIETY In the so-called “Information society”, information technologies are assumed to radically change our way of life. In this joint work with a background from anthropology and robotics we pursue the question of how far people agree in accepting to live in a world of advanced information technologies such as personal robots, neuroprotheses or wearable computers. This is usually taken for granted that we already have entered the information era which implies living in a radically new kind of societyi as the upcoming «World Summit on the Information Society» (WSIS) suggests. Now organized by a Committee established under the patronage of Kofi Annan, the summit was initially mentioned in a resolution of the International Telecommunication Union, in order to be organized by the United Nations. According to its web site the summit's challenge is: “the modern world is undergoing a fundamental transformation as the industrial society that marked the 20th century rapidly gives way to the information society of the 21st century. This i Although there is considerable literature on the information society, the authors who study its fundamental basis are very rare. See [3] and [13]. dynamic process promises a fundamental change in all aspects of our lives, including knowledge dissemination, social interaction, economic and business practices, political engagement, media, education, health, leisure, and entertainment. We are indeed in the midst of a revolution, perhaps the greatest that humanity has ever experienced. To benefit the world community, the successful and continued growth of this dynamics requires global discussion and harmonization in appropriate areas” [18]. In such a context, it is easy to understand that the idea of a «digital divide» between the «haves» and the «have nots» frightens people who are convinced that the access to the new information and communication technologies – and especially the Internet – will provide everyone with everything they need. On this point too, recent and less recent authors are afraid that a digital divide will be difficult to avoid [4], [6], [9], [10]. Thus, the goal of the first step of the WSIS (Geneva, December 2003) is trying to obtain a consensus (between different countries, the business world and the civil society), and to develop some operative action plans. The second step (Tunis, 2005), will focus on the evaluation of results. The work referenced above study this group of questions and we also believe in their importance. In this paper, however, we will discuss the relation between human beings – as embodied – and new information technologies such as robot technologies which allows information to flow without a human body as interface. In our view, the information society is characterized by an increasing speed in accessing information. According to Virilio [15], the history of humankind has seen three major revolutions that point towards an ever-increasing speed in getting in touch with the world. The first one, that is transport, allowed humankind to master space, by achieving the ability to move through it.