It was reported recently that a Chinese-created humanoid robot ran a half marathon and beat the human record for time. The reporter ended the piece with the warning, “watch out humans, because the robots are coming.”
For me, the whole news story immediately conjured up an image of the terra cotta soldiers buried with the Chinese emperor two thousand years ago. Those thousands of soldiers could just as easily be the thousands of robots existing today doing our bidding. Both armies highlight the pinnacle of technology in crafting and creating at different points in history.
China is building their new army, but not of terra cotta, instead, they’re crafted of chips and metal capable of thinking on their own. Both the terra cotta and metal machines are a reflection of technology, a reflection of how societies use large-scale “armies” of human-like figures to express power, control, and ingenuity. The question is whether the new robots will have the staying power of thousands of years and still look as good as new, or become a pile of metal parts at the bottom of a landfill. Only time will tell, but either way, I see a summer blockbuster in this story’s future.