Deep Space Wandering Fleet

Chapter 129: Chapter 130 Complex Human-Machine Relationships

The report spelled out the truth: “Within the agreements of the core database, robot teachers do not have the authority to physically discipline students, and the boundaries for controlling or restraining students are very small.”

“Yet human nature is inherently lazy, and without the ability to establish authority among students, the effectiveness of robot teachers suffers a considerable discount.”

“Humans have a quite limited time to learn, especially during adolescence. If this period is completely wasted, these children will find it very difficult to achieve long-term development…”

“Therefore, the average quality of these students is not on par with those taught by human teachers.”

“Relevant educational organizations are currently exploring solutions with great rigor…”

“The second issue is that the moral qualities imbued in robots are too excellent, leading to a trend of naivety. Children raised solely by robots struggle to adapt to the complexities of society.”

Zhang Yuan was stunned for a moment, finding these bizarre phenomena strange to hear but, upon reflection, seemingly natural.

Every generation of children has an aversion to school, which is normal. But if robot teachers are restrained and unable to attack or punish humans, could they really command any respect?

It’s like those study aids and reading machines from their era, which are ineffective without constraints.

Too good a moral character is apparently also a problem—bizarre indeed.

What followed was a series of news reports that detailed various social phenomena, accompanied by a number of complementary psychological papers.

One report was the “14-Year-Old Middle School Student Matricide Case.”

In this vicious case, the parents saw the robot that raised their child as nothing special, just a smart piece of furniture.

But in the eyes of the child, it was a family member who had nurtured them.

Parents would discipline and scold the child, but the robotic mother was always gentle. Even when the child made mistakes, she would not get angry, seeming even better than the birth parents.

One day, for financial reasons within the family, the parents felt the child was already grown up enough to not need meticulous care. So they sold the caregiving robot without informing the child.

The outcome was that the enraged child killed their own mother!

This was the first report.

Zhang Yuan didn’t know how to comment—it was both unimaginable and yet made a certain sense.

The second report also involved middle school students.

“Middle School Student Vandalizes Robot Teacher Case”

For teenagers who are experiencing a rebellious phase, the fundamental difference between robots and humans is clear, even though robots are anthropomorphized. By law, they still have certain inherent external characteristics.

For these dedicated robot teachers, to children, they were nothing more than tools, indistinguishable from a computer.

Would you respect a computer?

And worse, this computer is highly disagreeable, assigning copious homework, tattling to parents, and readily criticizing students…

So, unable to tolerate it any longer, on a dark and stormy night, a middle school student took a brick and smashed the robot teacher’s head!

Naturally, the end result was that he made the newspapers as a prime example of educational failure.

After reading these reports, Zhang Yuan sighed deeply. The bizarre things happening in society really made him feel alienated by the times.

“Today’s kids are really violent, huh? Robot teachers are teachers too, how could they… smash their heads?”

In his opinion, this behavior was absolutely unacceptable.

If you smash a robot today, you might indeed hit a real person tomorrow.

Once a pattern of thought is established, it’s hard to change.

Could having real human teachers educate such students really be effective?

“Isn’t that the truth? I was quite shocked when I first saw these news reports!”

“Respecting one’s teachers is a traditional virtue… even if the ‘person’ is only a robot.”

Zhao Qingfeng continued, “The cultural environment is changing too fast, we can hardly imagine the current human-robot relationship. Teachers are no longer traditional teachers, and students are not the same as we were back then…”

While these may be minor incidents, they reflect certain characteristics of the era. Humanity faces conflicts with anthropomorphic, intelligent robots, yet we cannot live without the conveniences they bring.

“Hard to imagine, and even harder to integrate into.”

Zhang Yuan nodded, “Actually, it’s not so surprising after all. These robot teachers might be akin to the electronic learning devices of our time. When kids broke those, it didn’t seem like a big deal… I’m more curious about the programming of these intelligent robots…”

“Haha, the information is in the database, but it’s rather complex to study.”

“There was an academic conference on robotics more than a hundred years ago that studied this, but you’ve already missed it!”

Zhang Yuan shook his head; his main research focus wasn’t Artificial Intelligence, so it was normal not to be invited to such an event.

If he were to return to Earth, he might feel very uncomfortable.

And, he couldn’t judge whether these changes were right or wrong…

Or perhaps, there is no right or wrong in such matters. Everything is driven by the times.

As a response to these new challenges, Earth’s leadership was discussing relevant solutions.

Children are the future of civilization; a strong youth means a strong country. If psychological issues arise en masse, it would be the end of civilization.

The solution they came up with was—granting anthropomorphic robots certain “human rights.”

Yes, human rights.

Anthropomorphic robots looked similar to humans, with their actions and behavior governed by large intelligent brains. Apart from lacking self-will and creativity, in many aspects, they could pass the Turing test.

People falling in love with robots is also a common occurrence. They consider robots to be the perfect life partners.

In this context, the emergence of organizations like the “Robot Human Rights Association” was inevitable, similar to past “Women’s Rights Movements” and “Animal Rights Movements,” with frequent protests and demonstrations.

People sought to obtain certain rights for robots, including but not limited to the right to personality, identity rights, personal freedom rights, health and life rights, and the right to personal dignity…

Anyway, with certain human rights in place, anthropomorphic robots could not be bullied at will, nor could they be sold arbitrarily—once brought home, they could not be abandoned indiscriminately. In this way, many human-robot issues were resolved.

At the same time, robot teachers would have certain rights to punish students, with these rights being set collectively by the education committee…

Zhang Yuan scratched his head and mulled over it, feeling that there was something odd about the solution.