This Thanksgiving, it is worthwhile to practice a different sort of gratitude. Not only for family and food, but for a quiet class of machines whose chief gift has been the reduction of human exposure to danger. From the earliest wheelbarrow bomb robots of the 1970s to the throwaway reconnaissance bots of Iraq and the delivery drones quietly ferrying blood and samples above congested cities, these machines have displaced the most dangerous, most routine tasks in ways that are morally consequential as well as utilitarian.
Explosive ordnance disposal robots are the classical and most visceral example. They were born in a crucible of lethal necessity, designed to keep trained technicians out of the blast zone and to take the mechanical blows that otherwise would have been human. Their history is telling. Early British designs emerged in response to lethal losses during the Troubles; in more recent conflicts low cost platforms like the MARCbot and more robust tracked vehicles have become standard issue for patrols and EOD teams. Operators routinely report that the robot that takes the hit is, in a very real operational sense, a life saved. These anecdotes are more than sentiment. They point to a durable truth: removing the human from the immediate point of danger changes mission calculus, force posture, and casualty statistics.
A second, very contemporary instance of risk reduction comes not from the battlefield but from health logistics. Autonomous aerial delivery has matured from pilots and proof of concepts into operational services that materially shorten transfer times for critical material. Zipline proved the concept in Rwanda and Ghana by delivering blood and vaccines to remote clinics, and then adapted those lessons to higher income settings in partnership with health systems. More recently, the NHS partnered with Apian and Wing to carry urgent blood samples between Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals in London, cutting a thirty minute road transfer to under two minutes by air. That temporal compression is not mere convenience. Faster diagnostics and faster transfusions can change clinical decisions and patient outcomes. In practical terms the drone becomes a time machine for triage and an instrument that reduces procedural risk to clinical staff and couriers.
If we allow ourselves gratitude, it should be tempered and precise. Gratitude for a robot is ultimately gratitude for choices made by designers, logisticians, commanders, clinicians, and regulators. Machines reduce exposure to certain hazards, but they also redistribute risk. A drone that replaces a van does not erase the need for oversight of flight corridors, airspace safety, privacy, and failure modes. An EOD robot that clears one device may encourage different tactics that alter adversary behavior. The moral texture of ‘‘risk reduction’’ is therefore complex. The presence of a machine shifts both responsibility and expectation. We must be grateful for lives not lost while remaining vigilant about what we trade in return.
There is also a less visible, longer term hazard. Reliance on machines invites de-skilling. If routine exposure to risk is removed from a cohort of professionals, the tacit knowledge that is learned in the crucible of experience may atrophy. In medicine and military practice those tacit skills matter. A robot or drone may carry a sample faster, but a surgeon still needs to interpret the result and act. An EOD team still needs to design the mission and make complex judgments under uncertainty. Institutions must therefore pair automation with deliberate training programs and with robust doctrines that articulate when machines should be used, and when humans must remain in the loop.
Finally, gratitude without governance is hollow. The machines that save lives today are designed and fielded by actors embedded in markets, militaries, and hospitals. Accountability travels with them. Who pays when a medical drone fails? Who is answerable when an algorithmic aide misroutes a resupply and a patient suffers a delay? These are not hypothetical regulatory puzzles. They are the next items on the checklist if we value the lives that automation has spared. Policy, transparent reporting of incidents, standardized resilience testing and an ethic of precaution must accompany our thanks.
So this Thanksgiving let us acknowledge what machines have done: they have taken on the bluntest, filthiest, most immediately dangerous tasks so that humans do not have to. Let us be grateful, yes. Let us also ask better questions about the institutions that deploy those machines, and about the professional communities that must adapt to them. Gratitude without interrogation will cloak the true work of technological stewardship, which is to ensure that risk reduction is durable, equitable, and that the machines we praise do not become substitutes for moral judgement or for the public systems that keep societies safe.