Robot rights
What do we hope to achieve with ever more sophisticated AI? Robots that can interact with us socially? Any robot capable of this would surely be entitled to any rights that we are, and would therefore to all intents and purposes be equipped to make its own decisions on aspects such as occupation and lifestyle. Without definate criteria for intagibles such as setience and feeling where do you draw the line between design function and slavery? Any robot capable of say performing open heart surgery would need advanced sensory and decision making capabilty that would put it far above your average dolphin in terms of the sophistication ladder. Does this then mean that after a hard days work at the operating theatre, surgeonbot is entitled to go home, put his feet up and listen to some Bruce Hornsby whilst he recharges his hydrogen wotsit. Would you send a dog in to defuse a suspected explosive device? No, because they aren't equipped with the requisite tools for the job, in fact, barring hunting, your average dog isn't really equipped to do anything, yet we all feel sad when we hear reports of animal cruelty on the tv, because we feel that every living thing has certain rights. Imagine a very basic device, it has a simple electronic sensor inside that puts an LED on when it is struck or kicked; the LED is labelled "pain". Ok i know its a very vague association to make but when you take sophistication out of it, the mechanisms are the same. I know we're a long way from surgeonbot at the moment, but shouldn't we resolve these issues before we delve too deeply into the robot psyche!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
