The Future Of Business With The Introduction Of Sentient Robots

A robot is a programmable machine that physically interacts with the world around it and is capable of carrying out a complex series of actions autonomously or semi-autonomously. A sentient robot is a hypothetical robot that exhibits behavior at least as skillful and flexible as humans do.

The first industrial robot to be put to function was in the year 1962 in a General Motors manufacturing plant. As of today, 56 years later, robots are used in industries beyond manufacturing such as healthcare, agriculture etc. , Technology is a fast growing industry and technological advancements in the last 50 years is evidence enough to prove that the future of automation is not just robots but sentient robots. Although job security and social polarization are important factors in the immediate future, how will mankind be able to do business with the existence of sentient robots. Every business is made up of an organization of people performing different functions. If these people were eliminated and replaced by sentient robots, what would be the structure of a business and how would it function.

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte would be the best person to ask this question as not only he is a world renowned engineer, but his specialization lies in probabilistic robots. Probabilistic robotics is concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. This is the underlying base for sentient robots. According to experts, robots are predicted to become sentient in the next decade or two. Through his many years of research in the field of probabilistic robotics, Prof. Whyte would be able to shed some light on how mankind could potentially prepare for the survival of its kind, given the future of sentient robots in the world of business. If robots are the future of work, then where do humans fit in. We need to think about how our actions to automate most activities could potentially lead to the obsolesce of mankind. For example driverless cars are forecast to make up 75% of all traffic by 2040. Assume that robots were used to not only manufacture these driverless cars but also sell them. Who would then be the potential customers buying these cars and how would they be able to afford it. We can only assume that given current technological advancements and expert predictions, it would be sentient robots buying driverless cars and not humans. But what if robots didn’t need a driverless car and could function as a mode of transport on its own.

All these potential scenarios call to question experts such a Prof. Whyte on how humans need to think differently in terms of the future of business. Given the issues raised above, job security and social polarization wouldn’t matter as much as the obsolesce of human labor in its entirety.