The term robot derives from the Czech word robota, which means slavery, drudgery, or compulsory labor. In 1920, the Czech author Karel apek (1890-1938) wrote a play entitled R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots, where he used robota for machine-humans, giving rise to the English word robot. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov coined the term robotics as the field of academic study of the construction of robots. This connection to fiction points already to the utopian and eschatological elements in the science of robotics.

Kinds of robots

Basically, one can distinguish between industrial robots and artificial intelligence (AI) robots. Industrial robots are either remote controlled devices or machines that repeat constantly a series of movements, as in a factory. AI robots have some level of intelligence that enables them to react more flexibly and autonomously in their environment. The two kinds of AI robots mirror the two camps within AI. Classical AI robots are controlled by a central processor running a specific program. Such robots are used in highly restricted static environments. Embodied robots on the other hand are distributed systems interacting with natural worlds. Both technologies have a wide array of applications ranging from household robots, nurses, search and rescue robots, robots used as social agents for global communications, and robots used in ubiquitous computing (intelligent agents hidden in everyday tools such as stereos and coffeemakers).

The understanding of human intelligence in AI robotics mirrors specific theories about humans and their intelligence. In Classical AI, intelligence is understood as information processing. The most important elements of intelligence are learning, knowledge representation, searching, language, and mathematical theorem proving. One of the most well-known applications for this type of intelligence is chess. When applied to robots, this concept makes for very good and reliable machines that act in clear defined, restricted, and unchangeable environments. In natural worlds, however, these robots can navigate only very slowly and cannot deal with rapidly changing surroundings.

Embodied AI understands intelligence as a result of the evolutionary process and thus as the capability to survive. Abstract features such as logic and chess are seen as by-products of the human capability to survive in many different environments. Robots built according to this understanding of intelligence are increasingly autonomous. During the late 1990s, researchers started to build autonomous robots with social features for natural human-robot interfaces, which enlarges the field of possible applications.

Ethical and religious perspectives

Several theological and ethical problems arise in robotics. One argument for the use of robotics in industry and manufacturing is that it liberates humans from tedious work. But robotics also threatens to make many humans superfluous and to eliminate jobs. However, this issue is not specific for robotics but relates to the whole area of technology and will not be explored in this entry. The following ethical and theological problems refer to AI robots only.

Playing God. Often people think that AI researchers do their work out of hubris. AI roboticists who build autonomous creatures are sometimes accused of "playing God." The dangers of such actions are described in myths, including the myth of Prometheus, and the story of Frankenstein in Western culture. The Jewish Kabbalah provides an alternative view in the construction of golems (artificial humans made from clay), which is seen as a form of prayer. The imago dei (the Biblical statement that God has created humans in God's image) symbolizes the divine creativity in human beings so that whenever people are creative they praise God. In "rebuilding" themselves, people create the most complex being God created, thus praising and celebrating God to the utmost. Many of the founders of AI come from this Jewish tradition and understand their work in that sense.

Anthropomorphization and human uniqueness. If it were possible for researchers to build robots that work like humans, does that mean humans are also some kind of machine? Many people feel threatened by AI products because they seem to undermine human uniqueness. Because most people react more strongly to physical entities, the threat is perceived to be even greater with robots. Instead of just being connected to a computerized entity via a keyboard and screen, people connect with robots in a physical, sensual way, and they have to deal with creatures that share their physical space.

Experiments by Byron Reeves and Cliff Nass have demonstrated the degree to which humans anthropomorphize gadgets that are in some way responsive. Their experiments reveal that anthropomorphization of stereos, cars, or computers is a natural reaction in humans, and it takes a conscious effort for people to not react that way to the technical tools with which they interact in daily life. That is, people tend to react to robots as if they were partners, yet this reaction, stemming from innate social mechanisms, triggers fears not just that humans will loose their uniqueness but also that robots may surpass humans and make humans superfluous.

In most cultures, the human understanding of self contains an element of specialness; humans are distinct and cannot be compared with other species. In the Jewish and Christian tradition this sense of specialness has often been based on the imago dei. For millennia, people have attempted to identify with empirical human features, such as the humanoid body, human intelligence, or humor. A relational interpretation of the imago dei seems to have become prevalent. Based on a relational ontology, the imago dei is a promise of God to start and maintain a relationship with humans. Human uniqueness is then based not on special human capabilities but only on the faith-based statement that God has chosen humans as partners with whom God can interact and who will answer (sometimes).

The fear of losing human uniqueness when researchers are capable of building machines that are as smart as people is thus based on a traditional interpretation of the imago dei and can be overcome by this relational understanding of the concept. With this concept in mind, the idea of humans constructing robots as a spiritual enterprise, as depicted in the golem tradition, gains a stronger foundation. Christians may add that just as God is relational in the trinity and in the relation with humans, humans are relational. In building robots, humans create creatures with whom they can interact and who will answer. What is amazing is that even the simplest insect is much more complex and more interactive than any robot the most brilliant engineers have been able to build as of the beginning of the twenty-first century. Building autonomous robots in the image of God's creatures does not therefore make humans arrogant, but rather increasingly modest and admiring of the complexity of God's creation.

See also ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; CYBERNETICS; CYBORG

ANNE FOERST