The other day I saw a video on the internet of a bunch of grapes being peeled off by a surgical robot.
The detailed work of the precision instruments on the tiny bunch of grapes was fascinating and scary at the same time.
In the reactions to such clips, the horror scenario of robot rule is conjured up again and again.
Seeing robotic arms skinning an orange makes you wonder if you'd even want to put your body in the hands of machines.
"Da Vinci" is the name of the surgical system that is used in most of these clips and has been approved in the USA since 2000.
It is controlled by human hands via a console, while another human monitors the processes in the operating room – the machines compare very well to humans, literally.
In 2020, a clip showing robotic arms operating on and sewing up a banana went viral.
It was shared with the false claim that long-distance 5G internet connection had been operated here.
People are receptive to the dream of accessing world-class medical care anywhere in the world via the Internet.
The calculation methods are complex
Surgical robots are getting better and better.
And for a while now, medical robots have been working with the support of artificial intelligence, for example when they compensate for the trembling of the human hands with which they are controlled.
It's only logical to wonder if we'll ever do away with the human behind it entirely.
But what we do with our hands, from brushing our teeth while half asleep to a high-precision appendix operation, requires complex processes that people carry out more or less consciously.
The calculation methods for such movements to be taken over by machines are complex.
A 2019 research paper details how a robotic hand was taught to solve a Rubik's cube: training the very specific hand movements took several months and a huge amount of computing power.
So we will still have to wait until real operations can be successfully performed by humanoid machines.