In the article “If We’re Not Careful, Tech Could Hurt the Fight against COVID-19”, it talked about about how using tech to fight the coronavirus could actually do the opposite of good. There are a lot of good reasons but one that stands out to me the most is wether the item would do what its supposed to do. We’ve seen many movies about how robots take over the world or robots cause a ruckus and “dysfunction”. But this problem isn’t only about wether we should let technology handle Covid-19, but it also applies to the future too. Should we let robots do surgery, test our health, do our checkup, clean or teeth, on and on. You might think that robots could do things more quicker, efficiently, and accurately, but what about that slim chance that it makes a mistake. What if the mistake happens while somebody’s life is on the line. Should we trust the technology to do such an essential task that many have to practice hours, days, years to perfect.
First of all, we have something that robots don’t have; emotion. Emotion and our humanely thinking can do a lot in many different situations. One example is in war. If you want a group of humans to defeat a fleet of enemy soldiers. The only problem is that there’s a town right next to it, so if you defeat the troopers, the town will go down as well. A human would probably think twice before destroying thousands, but a robot who doesn’t care about human lives, will destroy thousands. Why? Because its main and only objective is to defeat the troopers. It won’t think about how much people died in the attack or the loss, it will only think about its mission and mission solely. Robots will sacrifice lives to complete its mission, while humans will do something, trying to minimize damage.
Second, what would the people that get substitute by the robots do? Many would go jobless and soon poverty will wash over America and other places that rely on robots. If a robot could do surgery or make things then what are humans for, what are jobs for. People will lose jobs and soon, there will be a great difference between the rich and the poor. Economy would go haywire, the stock market will probably crash and the whole financial world will be in despair.
Lastly, technology is much too defective. These days the internet and technology is not necessarily stable. There are many hackers out there willing to sabotage everything they come across of. At the least a minor company’s shipment of their product could stop, and the very most, a important person’s treatment or surgery could defect and instead kill. Technology has proved itself defective and harmful many times in history sometimes small, other times devastating.
Technology over all is a very useful tool that us humans have and it has many pros and cons. While the cons might look scarier than the pros, scientists and engineers today are constantly trying to improve technology. Technology might not be too reliable today, but in the future it might just be reliable. For now, we need to be weary about technology’s cons, but enjoy the pros that it carries as well.