Zoonotic Robogenesis

by Elizabeth A. Watkins & Laura B. Greig

All the big pandemics, from the Bubonic Plague to the Coronavirus, share origins in the human destruction of natural spaces. Zoonotic diseases (diseases that are transmittable from non-human-animal to human-animal) are nature’s revenge for our abuses: over-industrialization, factory farming, suburban sprawl, and our failure to address climate change. Honestly, COVID-19 is such a comprehensive clusterfuck of society’s problems, it’s hard to even start talking about it. So we are going to focus on one particular aspect: robot-assisted medicine.

Robots doing hospital work in Wuhan, via New Scientist

We join a chorus of expert voices in saying that we need to talk about who gets to financially benefit from robot labor. We want more robots in the workplace; there are so many opportunities for technology to mitigate suffering and preserve natural spaces. We wish these were public projects, aimed for the equal benefit of all citizens. Right now, the same billionaires that refuse to change the greed-based practices that causes these pandemics are the only ones that can afford to develop this technology.

Consider the following:

• Caregiver roles are often filled by marginalized and under-compensated people.

• Automation requires surveillance.

• Therefore, marginalized and under-compensated people are being surveilled so that robots can be built to replace them.

Since greedy, exploitative people seem to be in charge of every system, we cannot ask them to change the system for us. We have to build our own robots. Luckily, the technology exists for us to do exactly that: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Processing, Python. Automate your own labor, take ownership of your skills before someone else takes it from you. Once you do that, help others automate their labor as well.