If I Were a Robot, Where Would I Want to Live?

In London, of course:

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

At least they take themselves seriously (because no one else will, I hope):

“If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it says.

Robo-healthcare? I wonder if there will be robo-retirement packages for machines with outdated programming? What about robo-vacation days? (shut down the factory, the computers are going to the Grand Canyon.)

Then there is the ethical ramifications:

Mr Christensen said: “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.”

No more throwing the remote on the floor when you are done watching TV; I suppose this would be an assault. Even more problematic, will owning a personal computer become robot slavery?

In an age where the life is less and less important (killing on both ends of the spectrum, old and young, is increasingly acceptable), it is a little surprising that these scientists care so much about protecting the lives of their robots. But then again, robots are not alive--they are machines--so by granting equal rights to non-living objects, they are still destroying the dignity of the human person. Chalk up one more point for the culture of death.