How Close Are We Really To A Robot-Run Society? (Fresh Air with Terry Gross)

From Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid, to Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg in The Terminator, popular culture has frequently conceived of robots as having a humanlike form, complete with "eyes" and mechanical limbs. But tech reporter John Markoff says that robots don't always have a physical presence.

"I have a very broad definition of what a robot is," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "A robot can be ... a machine that can walk around, or it can be software that is a personal assistant, something like Siri or Cortana or Google Now."

Markoff, the author of the new book Machines of Loving Grace, points out that artificial intelligence plays a role in many of our lives — sometimes without our even realizing it. "I have a car that I bought this year ... that is able to recognize both pedestrians and bicyclists, and if I don't stop, it will," he says. "That's a very inexpensive add-on that you can get for almost any car on the market now."

Looking ahead, Markoff predicts further advances in driverless-car technology. He also foresees a generation of computer chips that don't require batteries; instead, they would run on sunlight or vibration or sweat.

"In the next five years ... this [computer chip] technology will fan out all around us and create applications we can't even think about today," he says. "They'll be used for robotic sensors. They'll be made to make robots more mobile. And they'll be used to do a million other things we can't even conceive of, and it will continue to transform our society."
Interview:
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/20/433000643/how-close-are-we-really-to-a-robot-run-society