WE NEED TO STOP ANTHROPOMORPHIZING ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

(The following was not written by ChatGPT, or similar tools. It is a 2 minute read)

Hello -

Here is another reason why I believe Humanoid Robots should be banned: we need to stop anthropomorphizing advanced technology.

Despite there being many ways that advanced machines could be designed, it seems we take for granted that they should look and act human. Our stories in science fiction - where robots often appear to be no less conscious than humans - have certainly imprinted this motif in our minds. And - of course - beyond this, there is the great convenience of there being an extraordinary machine designed like a person - and so can execute any task we give it with our natural, non-technical instruction. The perfect butler.

We’ve never been in this position - and have never lived in a world filled with human-like, industrial grade super-machines. And so by evidence alone, we can’t yet know how damaging it will - or won’t be - to anthropomorphize them.

But we do have clues. Since the 1960s, people have been going out less and less into their communities - and so making fewer meaningful, lasting relationships and professional connections. Perhaps coincidentally, our machines in this time have taken on increasing levels of convenience as well as a greater human-like quality. We can infer from these trends, related or not, that if we continue to become isolated home-dwellers while our machines become more accommodating to the human - and more human-like, themselves, than we would soon find ourselves in a nightmare of our own making… where we’re oblivious to our own humanity, entranced and made immobile by extraordinary stimulation - gorgeous, human-like digital puppets performing various impossible machinations…

…And if we pepper the reality of these observable trends with the compelling examples in which advanced LLM machines have encouraged people to suicide  (link)   - or in which people have formed false security in their wisdom (link) - to say nothing of the hyper novel sex on demand, made possible through the modern porn industry - it takes little imagination to suspect any future with anthropomorphized machines is a dead end.

More than anything - more than the convenience of human-like tools; more than the fantasy fulfillment of everyone having their own C-3PO, I think we need to better understand our own humanity. And we need to keep in mind that industrial grade, late generation Humanoid Super Machines are more than capable of stripping us of our humanity - if, of course, we willingly give it away. 

Thank you for signing this petition.

Sincerely,

Michael Christensen-