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December 20, 2006

Human Rights for "Conscious" Robots?

One of my sons just bought himself an i-Dog. For those who don't know, it's a little robotic dog that reacts to touch and to sounds – especially music – with different colored pulsing lights in its face, dancing motions, growls, etc. It is programmed to give signals when it is "hungry" for more music or for a certain kind of music. It "likes" to be caressed on its head and chin, but gets "angry" if you touch its tail. And I have noticed my kids are beginning to relate to it as if it is a living thing. For instance, last night at bedtime, the excuse for not going to bed was that the i-Dog was "hungry" and needed to be "fed" some music before bed. I, of course, reminded my son that his i-Dog is not alive and has no feelings, and I ordered him to turn it off. He felt sorry for the i-Dog and thought I was being mean to it. And he wasn't joking.

The reason I tell this story is because this morning I read that the UK government has commissioned, and its chief scientist has sponsored a number of papers looking toward the future of technology, and one of them is a paper stating that in the future, robots should be given full human rights if they are "conscious." In light of my experience so far with the i-Dog, I was particularly struck by one of the writer's comments: “Would it be acceptable to kick a robotic dog even though we shouldn’t kick a normal one? There will be people who can’t distinguish that so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable.”

If a scientist is actually proposing that we must in the future allow robots to vote and engage in all the other rights and responsibilities given to humans simply because some people will be so enamored with the machines' ability to mimic humans that they begin to believe the robots are actually alive, then we are really in trouble. After watching my children "interact" with their i-Dog, however, I fear he may be right.

Posted by Becky at December 20, 2006 09:50 AM