The trouble with leisure is what do you do for fun?
Maria Antoinette from Sofia Coppola film
I decided to do a review of the film “Robot and Frank” because after watching it, my head was ready to explode there were so many implications to its premise. The movie itself is sort of a feel good aging man coping with dementia, helped by a personal care robot, sometime in the future. I say sort of because Frank is not a guy that can be loved by even his own family, but slowly a bond develops between him and the robot. A simple enough concept, without giving away the plot twist. I’ll simply say Frank used to be a cat burglar.
But, when you begin to take the story to its logical conclusion: Artificial intelligence will allow robots to do more and more work that humans currently perform. That humans are moving toward a time when there will be less and less work for them to do and what do you do with all that excess human potential. Despite the disclaimer that the events occur sometime in the future, semiconductors and robots have already become a major part of your everyday life. if you have purchased a car recently you realize that there are sensors for almost everything, even down to the pressure in your tires. Google’s self driving car only adds to the mix.
Using the car analogy, Henry Ford established the assembly line and humans were the vital component in the making of an automobile. Now you can go to almost any auto assembly plant from Japan to Germany, and even Detroit and what you will encounter is rows and rows of robots. Take a look at the BMW shop floor in the video above and you see the future. The human presence is noticeably absent.
The reason the wheels in my head started spinning: Enter the Honda ASIMO that already exists as a walking, talking, thinking machine that can do many of the things a human can do… much like the robot in the movie. Talking about
ASIMO is not designed to frighten you, but simply to get you thinking about the future. A future where machines will be working with accountants, and surgeons, become caregivers, and even companions. ASIMO means that humans will need to up their game in order to remain relevant, at least in the way we have always thought of “us”. We will all have to rethink how we interact with the people we service, as well as the people who will be made obsolete by these thinking machines. It is a disrupt that calls into question how we are educated, what we do with that education, and ultimately how we live our lives in social groups.
That all being said, I highly recommend you view the movie “Robot and Frank” because first of all, it’s great entertainment. But, once you have watched the movie and seen all the things the robot can do, let your mind begin to wander much like mine and see if you too come up with many possibilities. That quote from Sofia Coppola’s film becomes a lot more relevant when you think about “The trouble with leisure is what do you do for fun”, because there IS a robot in your future.