Thanks to the various science fiction stories in our movies, tv shows and novels, there are numerous images in our head about what the future could potentially look like. Some are of a utopia and some are of a dystopia, both directly dictated by how technology evolves and how we deal with it.

One example that keeps coming up is that of robots. If you take a look at the science fiction stories out there, a lot of them (if not most), point out to a future where our survival may be threatened by a robot uprising.

And while this idea may have been laughable a few decades ago, today it is something that has actually become plausible within the next few decades, given the pace of technological advancements in this area.

Robots are getting amazingly more cutting edge and are being imbued with more and more human like qualities and things are progressing both on the hardware and software level at an alarmingly fast pace.

Robots Be Humans

Now, don't get me wrong. I am well aware that to be human means having consciousness, feelings, emotions, a general awareness of 'you', and so on and robots are no where near to that. Who knows if they will ever be.

What I mean is that robots are increasingly gaining qualities that allow them to get closer to us. For example, with advancements in synthetic skin, robots can be made that look very human-like, and that's in the present. Imagine how life-like they'll be in the future.

But looks are only a part of it. Mobility is another area that has seen tremendous progress. If you see older videos of robots trying to do basic mobility like walking and compare them to today's robots doing the same, there is a stark difference. Today, they can walk, run, jump, do forward/backward flips and tons of other stuff with ease and look very human like while doing so. This too shall improve further with time.

Also, looking at the software side of things, AI is getting ever more powerful and advanced, so much so that it is now able to write articles, make paintings, sketches, play games, compose music and so on. These are creative things that we once thought could never be done by a machine. Whether or not their creations can be considered works of art or creativity is hotly debated but it cannot be debated that their creations are indeed human like and will only get better over time.

Another important aspect of us humans that several AI systems are mimicking is that of learning. We learn in a particular way by gathering more and more data, making mistakes, learning and re-learning things. And many AI systems have been successful in doing so too.

Now imagine a robot with an AI system with all these qualities. Wouldn't it be closer to human beings than ever before? Wouldn't there be a chance that it could get even closer? Certainly it can and that's the future we are headed towards.