441 Would you trust a robot to save your life? People will blindly follow instructions from a machine even if it leads them the wrong way

31BA8AF200000578-0-image-a-11_1456826988047

 

Many fear intelligent droids could become our overlords, like The Terminator.

And yet a study has shown we would still trust a robot with our lives in an emergency.
In a mock fire, volunteers blindly followed instructions from an ’emergency guide robot,’ even though it had proven to be unreliable and some participants had even been told it had broken down

The study, by engineers at Georgia Tech, is thought to be the first to study human-robot trust in an emergency situation.

‘People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault,’ said Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

I Word Understanding

Overlords– a person of great power or authority.
Mock fire – create false idea

II Have your say

Nowadays robots are present in the following fields:
• Industry and service
• Medical sector (i.e. surgical robots)
• Military
• Education
• Entertainment
• Dangerous, dirty and toxic environments
• Exploration (space, ocean exploration)
• Household (i.e. cleaning robots)
• Agriculture
When it comes to the future of robotics two of the most probable robots to be part of it
are:
• Care robots (babysitting, nursing, elderly care) and
• Humanoid robots

441 Would you trust a robot to save your life? People will blindly follow instructions from a machine even if it leads them the wrong way