Thread: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 19:58   #12
Nodrog
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Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mighteh
I am saying our moral values today are as relevant as they would ever were. We dont need to actually HAVE something to apply the law to. Just the mere possibility of the application for this law is the discusison here.
The problem is that if you arent talking about a specific kind of robot (eg one we could actually build), then the question is vague and impossible to answer. And if you do want to specify a certain robot, then the answer will depend entirely on the specifics of the example. If we could create a theoretical robot that was functionally identical to humans in every way, then of course it would have to be given rights. If the robot had a lot of the capabilities of humans except that it couldnt feel pain/suffer, then there would be no reason to give it rights. And so on.

It's like asking "if we encountered a race of aliens, should they be given rights?". It would depend on what sort of aliens they were - if they were just dogs that happened to be green then no, but if they were highly similar to humans in terms of mental capability then yes.

Quote:
So far everyone said, "oh, it too early for us to be able to tell anything".
It is though. Noone has any idea whether it's possible to create a robot capable of subjective experience, or one to which concepts of responsibility would apply, and without knowing what kind of robots we're talking about, statements of morality are useless. The BBC article is very sensationalist and implicitly exaggerates the current state of AI research by a fair bit.
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