Imagine you’re walking through your neighborhood and a four-foot-tall robot walks up beside you. It greets you by name, remembers your favorite coffee order, and offers to carry your groceries. You’ve never seen it before. Should you trust it?
That question isn’t science fiction anymore. Machines are getting smart. Large language models (LLMs) already contain vast amounts of information. They know about the physical world, human behaviors, our history, the nature of human jobs, and the behaviors of our pets. This stored information allows LLMs and other AIs to write books, make us laugh, fix computer code, get perfect scores on medical licensing exams, and file our taxes. LLMs, when given a physical body, are starting to autonomously navigate cities and hospitals, can open doors and get into robotic cars, hold conversations, and learn about the humans around them. Our generation is watching machines wake up. Robots aren’t just inert piles of plastic and metal anymore, but are growing into teachers, co-workers, and health companions. Some humans cry when familiar robots receive LLM or privacy upgrades that change their personality. Soldiers have tried to help robot team members to safety, despite it being (rationally) clear that machines can be fixed or replaced.
