With all the talk of robotics, I recently reread Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot.” Although Asimov started writing his AI opus more than 80 years ago, he set the tone for all things robot in science fiction ever since. Alas, it hasn’t set the tone for what’s happening in science fact.
Most remarkable were his “Three Laws of Robotics,” designed to keep humanity: (1) a robot may not injure a human, (2) a robot must obey humans, unless ordered to injure a human, and (3) a robot must otherwise protect its own existence. (The Will Smith movie from 20 years ago starts with these laws.) We can hope that AI companies operating in Western countries will abide by the spirit of these laws — and, certainly, any government overseeing these companies will.
However, there’s no reason to believe the Chinese government ever would.
This is why I am concerned to have seen the news this month that iRobot filed for bankruptcy after the company’s planned acquisition by Amazon was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission. Named after Asimov’s book, the Massachusetts-based company is famous for its Roomba vacuum cleaner, but it will now be taken over by its Chinese supplier, Shenzhen Picea Robotics, despite its success.
The news comes after years of progressive policymakers and organizations fighting against the Amazon-iRobot merger. Since the news broke that bankruptcy was forcing iRobot into the hands of a Chinese company, these same “progressives” have now either denied their malignant behavior or stayed conveniently silent.
Most galling is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat who represents iRobot’s home state. In 2022, Warren said at a news conference, “I have serious concerns about the Amazon-iRobot deal — dominant companies like Amazon shouldn’t be allowed to just buy their way out of competing. … The FTC should oppose this proposed merger to protect competition, lower consumer prices, and rein in Amazon’s well-documented anticompetitive activities.”
Other congressional Democrats who appeared at the conference to fight iRobot’s survival included Mondaire Jones (N.Y.), Katie Porter (Calif.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), and Jesús García (Ill.). Other progressive groups that have sounded off on this include the Open Markets Institute and Public Citizen. Ron Knox, a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, went so far as to describe Amazon’s proposed deal with iRobot as “the most dangerous, threatening acquisition in the company’s history.”
Because, of course, there’s nothing dangerous about the Chinese Communist Party stealing our technology (yet) again.
This is why these “progressives” now deny their pro-CCP complicit behavior, or stay silent. While former FTC chair Lina Khan in 2024 said she was “pleased” that bureaucrats didn’t let the Amazon and iRobot deal go through, her chief of staff, Sarah Miller, recently tweeted: “Fact check: US antitrust enforcers did not block Amazon’s bid to acquire iRobot.”
The far-left American Economic Liberties Project, likewise, in 2024 tweeted “congratulations” to the FTC for blocking the merger, but changed its tune recently.
Liberals and conservatives have been quick to call out the hypocrisy, including the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Vox co-founder Matt Yglesias, and former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
International Center for Law & Economics senior scholar Eric Fruits tweeted, “I feel like I’m going crazy. Didn’t Lina Khan repeatedly tout her record of deterring mergers before they had a chance to be challenged, like here,” while Chamber of Progress founder Adam Kovacevich wrote, “There are some in the US who have embraced European antitrust. But that thinking has led to the Chinese taking over iRobot, instead an American company. These are self-inflicted wounds.”
The FTC needs to reopen this deal and let Amazon buy iRobot, and progressives need to spend some time in a Beijing prison before they keep helping the CCP.
The artificial intelligence race is to the 21st century what nuclear weapons were to the 20th and industrialization was to the 19th. While we can be afraid of AI doomsday scenarios like indistinguishable fake videos, mass unemployment, or environmental damage, the ultimate AI doomsday scenario is a hostile country outmatching the United States in this digital arms race. The CCP will never be able to vanquish the United States, unless its left-wing allies continue to help undermine us from within.
Toward the end of “I, Robot,” Asimov speculates on the idea of robots leading humanity. He writes that a robot informed by his Three Laws would be “incapable of harming humans, incapable of tyranny, of corruption, of stupidity, of prejudice.
I doubt we will get the same deal from robots programmed by the CCP.