Social Robots May Gain Legal Rights, Says MIT Researcher 288
dcblogs writes "Social robots — machines with the ability to do grocery shopping, fix dinner and discuss the day's news — may gain limited rights, similar to those granted to pets. Kate Darling, a research specialist at the MIT Media Lab, looks at this broad issue in a recent paper, 'Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots.' 'The Kantian philosophical argument for preventing cruelty to animals is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions. Granting them protection may encourage us and our children to behave in a way that we generally regard as morally correct, or at least in a way that makes our cohabitation more agreeable or efficient.' If a company can make a robot that leaves the factory with rights, the marketing potential, as Darling notes, may be significant."
nonsense like this (Score:2, Insightful)
makes me want to damage social robots to prove a point
pandering to morons.....
Kant's argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Kant's argument is pretty unfashionable these days, since it rejects the idea that animals have rights for their own sake. It's still the best one, IMO, but good luck selling this to university ethics departments.
don't get touchy feely because it acts human (Score:5, Insightful)
Anthropomorphizing a machine because it mimics human behavior and then using that to justify giving it rights is a poor idea.
At some point in the distant future, when we arrive at the 'blade runner' level of replicant, then the issue can be picked up again. But don't put the cart before the horse.
Click-bait (Score:4, Insightful)
This looks like click-bait, but I just can't help myself.
In our capitalist society, robots already have limited rights by virtue of the fact that they're private property and they're still going to be expensive (for a little while at least). That fact alone gives more protection to robots than most dogs, from outsiders who may want to harm our pets, or damage our robots.
And I don't see a law protecting a robot from its own owner anytime soon. Cruelty to a robot is not even going to be considered an issue. Now, if we're talking about a visually impaired person having his prosthetic camera-eye forcibly ripped out of his head, then yes, that would be hell of cruel, but cruel to the visually impaired disabled person, not necessarily cruel to the tool.
Too pendantic (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way I see a robot who needs some legal rights will be if some system becomes self-aware and wants to walk around inside a robot body.
Re:nonsense like this (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get why we should be moral to robots, which can be replaced without any loss, while at the same time we can keep great apes, which are in all ways similar to humans in cages.
They use tools, they speak, they can learn to read and write, they understand abstract concepts, they have memories, they mourn their dead, they cry, they can be angry, happy and sad.
Yet we are allowed to be limit their freedoms, take their homes and use them for medical trials. Why?
Because of anthropocentric arrogance. There is no good reason to not give them something close to human rights.
Re:Someone read I, robot? (Score:4, Insightful)
next up the movement for rights of rocks - because rocks might have feelings too you know..
I'm an animist you insensitive clod!
Ironically, calling somebody an insensitive clod is offensive and mineralist. Why can't rocks, clods, and earthy lumps of all shapes and colors just get along?
Re:Do beef cows have rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an interesting view, but not share by society, otherwise small children wouldn't have any rights.
Re:Do beef cows have rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
They certainly don't have as many rights as horses, or house cats, or puppies, do they?
And that is exactly the point made in the article: that robotic "companions" may eventually be granted this additional protection, not because they are fundamentally different from a Roomba or a toaster oven, but because WE attach to them in a fundamentally different way than we would a Roomba or a toaster oven - we anthropomorphize them and project emotional and mental states onto them; we grow attached to them, and in some way, extending legal protections to them is a concession to OUR OWN emotions FOR the other thing, more than any inherent quality of the thing itself.
Re:No. No. Fuck no. (Score:5, Insightful)
If a person suffers from late stage Alzheimer's, is it OK to beat them up?
LBGT people (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No. No. Fuck no. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, I'll bite.
Humans unlike corporations, are people. They live, they die, they experience fear, and repeated pain has crippling side effects, that we all bear the cost for.
My Volt has detected my damaged trunk latch for thousands of miles. It's just a reading from a sensor that registers a different color for me to see and changes the car's behavior (it won't autolock when the trunk is unlatched). I will fix it at the next payday. No one who observes this behavior will "feel empathy for the car's pain" or think ill of me for allowing it to go on for a couple months (ok, they might ascertain that I'm a cheapskate, but I'm not denying that).
No child who observes this will ever assume that I will allow their broken fingers to go unmended until the next convenient paycheck. Or put off a veterinary visit for the same reason.
Anthropomophizing machines will not enable you to create better policy than any other fantasy belief system.
Re:nonsense like this (Score:4, Insightful)
No he accused us of double standards. His comment was that because higher primates demonstrate higher thinking, sentience, rationality, communications and abstract thought, it should be morally reprehensible to use them in an inhumane fashion. The fact that people have and do use one another that way sort of puts a finer point on his argument.
We are a moral species who commits immoral acts. In an attempt to broaden moral practices do we include other species and even machines as surrogates for human beings, to make certain we've bred moral behavior into the populace. This is a valid and important question. If we become emotionally attached to our machines (you guys know who you are... beware metal fever), does it behoove us to treat them with respect up to and including rights to insure that we treat one another with that same level of dignity. Seems like a long way to go, just to assure that we behave like higher life forms, but I'd consider it if it improved human behavior. In the end, I don't know what it will take to get people to behave, but I'm open to ideas.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. No. Fuck no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice post you wrote there. I think the same.
It's really idiotic that our productivity has never been so high, yet employed people are being forced to work more and more hours but getting paid less and less. Meanwhile there is a growing mass of unemployed and the social benefits are being cut really hard throughout all the developed world. It just doesn't make sense and it can't end well. It's unsustainable.
It all comes down to the ownership of the means of production. If they're privately owned, the robots will work to make a few people very very rich while the rest of the populace lives in a Mad Max wasteland. If the ownership is socialised, the benefits of the increased productivity will be shared by every one. People can work less hours, or not work at all, and still be able to make a living.
And before people start ranting about "nobody will want to do anything, then", I call your attention to some examples: In Ancient Greece, the slaves did all the work. That's when unoccupied citizens created Democracy and made great advancements in human knowledge, like Mathematics and Philosophy. Most of the great scientists and philosophers up until the XX century were rich heirs that had nothing to do and didn't want to manage their family businesses. They ended up advancing the human knowledge. Sure, when machines do all the work, lots of people will choose to indulge in sex and drugs, but lots of them will work hard in whatever field they like, be it philosophy, politics, history, science and technology, medicine, arts, music, whatever makes us humans and not just animals. And they will compete among each other, not for a piece of bread, but for glory, fame, babes, whatever. Merit will not suddenly vanish.