However, there is very different attitude towards robots in Asia. Countries such as Japan lead the world in the development of robots for automated factories and as human helpers, partly because of Japan’s ageing population and the well known health care problems that this will produce in the not too distant future. That attitude is perhaps embodied by Astro Boy, a fictional robot who in 2007 was named by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Japanese envoy for safe overseas travel. For these reasons, Barthelmess and Furbach argue that what we fear about robots is not the possibility that they will take over and destroy us but the possibility that other humans will use them to destroy our way of life in ways we cannot control. In particular, they point out that many robots will protect us by design. For example, automated vehicles and planes are being designed to drive and fly more safely than human operators ever can. So we will be safer using them than not using them. An important exception are the growing numbers of robots specifically designed to kill humans. The US, in particular, is using drones for targeted killings in foreign countries. The legality, not to mention morality, of these actions is still being ferociously debated. But Barthelmess and Furbach imply that humans are still ultimately responsible for these killings and that international law, rather than Asimov’s laws, should be able to cope with issues that arise, or adapted to do so.
