Veronique de Rugy on Regulatory Robophobia

NASA

The future is here. Driverless vehicles, drones, machine learning, and other emerging technologies offer programmable assistants able to handle mundane tasks and critical life-saving interventions alike. But not everyone is pleased. The digital Arcadia that awaits us is being fettered by the rise of the robophobes. Robophobia exists on a continuum, writes Veronique de Rugy in the . At the extreme end are reactionaries who indiscriminately look to stifle all that goes beep in the night. They call for swift and pre-emptive regulations to address any imagined safety or privacy concerns, however unlikely. Other cases of robophobia are milder, manifesting, for instance, in proposals for new government agencies.