In the future, so they say, there will be no need for making a will. Usually, our discussions at the Futurist Club are purely speculative, but this time we were treated to some cold, hard science. Bryce is taking a robotics elective, and he came up with an idea for a robot that can delegate a person’s possessions after they die in a fair way. There are always so many people fighting over that sort of thing, with Melbourne legal will lawyers having to be the mediators, and Bryce thinks this robot could provide the answer. If his robot could provide efficient prediction of when these strange lightning storms are going to hit, I’d be even more grateful, but…never mind.
Opinions were mixed, of course. Bryce generally DOES think everything can be solved with robots, and a certain number of us tend to agree with him. I’m a bit more skeptical, if only because I went to the reading of a will not too long ago, where I was left my Great Uncle Pat’s beloved canoe, The Windy Willow. Little did I know, Aunt Olga had been eyeing that canoe for years, and things sort of escalated until she attacked me with her keys and I ended up with a scar above my left eye.
What I’m really saying is that matters of law are something terrible complicated for your average robot, and perhaps even the advanced robots of today. You’ve got lawyers and attorneys who spend years in school just so they can learn this stuff and apply it with a little bit of human sensitivity, so you’re essentially making a mockery of their efforts to say that you can spend a semester programming a robot that can do their entire job.
Besides, applying law is more than just complex. It’s complex in a uniquely human way, where you have to be a human to really GET it. Best leave that to a property law expert in Melbourne. I’m not trying to be robot-ist, or anything (that’s one of the worst things you can be at this club), I’m just stating a fact.
-Myles