Even if robots brains were programmed to be similar to the neurology of humans, what sort of consciousness would emerge in the absence of hunger, desire, fear, need, or any of the other of the myriad problems of human existence? Would we even be able to recognize it?

Human consciousness emerged as we struggled to satisfy our biological needs and desires. Robots neither need nor desire anything. This is why the fear of robots dominating the human race and making slaves of us all is so absurd. They would have to want to do it.

On the other hand, a cogent argument can be made to the affect that the robot apocalypse already happened, and that the robots won.

From the On Being podcast. Original Air Date: April 25, 2013 From Krista Tippett’s interview with poet Marie Howe

Ms. Howe:

It’s just different. And one of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky, who’s a Russian poet, wonderful, amazing poet, who was exiled from the Soviet Union for being a poet. And he said look, he said, “You Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.” And I was thinking the machines — what face do you look into more than any other face in your life? The face of my iPhone.

Ms. Tippett:

Your screen. Yeah.

Ms. Howe:

My screen. I gaze into that face. I do what it tells me to do. If aliens came down and saw us all walking around, what would we do? All of us are walking around…

Ms. Tippett:

[laughs] Who do they obey?

Ms. Howe:

…looking into the — “Oh, they serve these machines.” I mean, the machines rule us. I have no will when it comes to my machines, to the computer, hours doing emails. I never applied for that job. What happened? It happened in 10 years, 15 years. They rule. It’s different from what we expected.