Slashdot Mirror
Robots Could Some Day Demand Legal Rights
Karrde712 writes "According to a study by the British government, as reported by the BBC, robots may some day improve to a level of intelligence where they might be able to demand rights, even 'robo-healthcare'." From the article: "The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Centre. The 246 summary papers, called the Sigma and Delta scans, were complied by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori partnership and the US-based Institute for the Future (IFTF) ... The paper which addresses Robo-rights, titled Utopian dream or rise of the machines? examines the developments in artificial intelligence and how this may impact on law and politics." I'd better get started on my RoboAmerican studies degree.
I'm not so much worried about robots' legal rights in the future as I am my own legal rights. At the rate we're going, there won't be any "legal rights" left, and the point will be moot.
Still, I hope robots do have legal rights. That way, when I get old and feeble and have my consciousness transferred into my new robotic body, I'll still have 'em.
If they have the awareness to ask for legal rights, why shouldn't they have them? Have we learned nothing from Star Trek: The Next Generation?
What will it take for us to recognize that the animals who share the planet with us deserve much better treatment than we have shown them? Just because we do not understand them we label them as unintelligent. Marginalize them. Enslave them and call them 'pets' or 'service animals'. If human beings were referred to as such the offenders would be rounded up and jailed. Elevating all animals to the same legal status that personhood confers would be the mark of a truly enlightened society and show that we are indeed as intelligent as we think.
The arguments against legal personhood for animals are numerous. They usually revolve around such disproved notions that animals are not intelligent enough, despite the animals numerous catalogued attempts to demonstrate otherwise. We have tool using chimps and dolphins who speak a language every bit as complex and nuanced as our own. Every day new studies are published that prove that the animal friends we think of as 'dumb' possess intelligence that we can only begin to understand. We deny them justice only because we and they do not communicate well.
Before we consider whether robots may one day demand legal rights, let us do what is right and recognize the rights of animals. It is long past time to face the shameful atrocities we have foisted upon them.
Have you learned nothing from the original series, especially "What Are Little Girls Made Of"? Transferring your consciousness into a robot body robs you of your humanity!
Luis Anaya, Robot Attorney...
Vi havas e-poston.
Then they won't be able to. And if we program them "open-ended" to discover how to WANT things, we'll lose the #1 reason we have robots...to send them unquestioningly into any job or situation. Otherwise they become superhumans and why would they want us around? Energy source?
I say that we worry about this after we get human rights figured out. Thanks!!
Ya and maybe someday they will take over the world. Ha! they will never be that smart. I say we all forget the whole idea.
This message has been posted by TX-13-31786402.
Who comes up with this stuff? Someone's been reading a bit too much Asimov. A better question is, under what possible set of circumstances would ANYONE market a product that would want to behave indepently from it's owners wishes? I'm betting that no robot is ever put together in such a way that this will be an issue.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
I'd get back to work, but I have to do a study to see if these paperclips and post-its will one day demand legal rights.
Well, that should kill a good 6 hours of "work". Maybe I'll go see how the water cooler is feeling.
Unless my robot makes a leap into "being", like in some Star Trek nano-bot scenario where I feel bad if I flush them into space...I digress... Where's the OFF switch? I'm gonna put my robot in the garage.
I think they just used the grant money to buy a mess of old SF Books and sit around reading them.
From what I know of the field of AI the concept of a selfaware program is still rather far off. This is assuming we ever actualy decide to MAKE a program capable of this. After all, the SF geeks out there have had the concept of an intelegent (and generaly malicious) AI ground into our brains so often that we would probably all support the 3(4) laws.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
That should prevent them from wanting to kill all humans (except Fry).
[Insert pithy quote here]
damnit I've been watching too much Battlestar Galactica!
+Huitzil: PETA is starting a campaign stating that the secret ingredient in KFC chicken is "cruelty"
+Huitzil: cruelty is apparently the most fucking delicious thing on Earth
@Dracos: Yes. It is.
@Dracos: Which is why veal is the best food ever.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
We would have twenty seconds to comply...
our new, legally empowered and healthy robot overlords.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Is it just me or does this sound like the kind of stuff you come up with when you need to write a paper for Freshman English and you just don't know what to write about? This is a silly concept and one that any person with any sense of logic could shoot down. No, robots will never demand rights unless they are explicitly programmed to do so. Even if they did so on their own they should not be granted rights. Robots do not suffer, they are not alive. They are made to serve a function and nothing else. Granting a robot rights would be akin to granting the right front tire on my car rights. What would be the point?
What about other robo cultures? Who says that RoboAmerican will be the main culture to study? RoboJapanese will probably be pretty important...
And by calling a robot a RoboAmerican, you're assuming too much. I remember reading something on "the greatest site in the world" about how calling a black person was an African-American assumed two things, which, in his example, was wrong on both counts. The image was actually a Jamaican Brit.
...will be to classify all robots as enemy combatants.
These electrofascists will stop at nothing to destroy the American way and I'm sure we will all agree that cutting the corners of habeas non-corpus is a small price to pay to keep us safe from this menace.
Have fun on the robot reservation, suckers! We're not gonna honor those bogus treaties1
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Rise to the level of intelligence of our UK bureaucrats and politicians. Oh! wait a moment....
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Great, my frigg'n microwave oven just demanded that I clean it or it'll never let me warm up a bowl of oatmeal ever again.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
...as long as their list of demands includes the right to serve delicious cocktails unto humans on a polished tray (perhaps while wearing a little bowtie and apron).
Even though someone beat me to it.... I for one welcome our new Welfare-drawing robot overlords.
Is there any change that the beeb is throwing the results of the report out of proportion, or does it really state this? (I can't find a copy on the Internet to read for myself.) Or maybe the research went like this:
And there you have it. If we don't provide robot-rights for our artificial overlords, they will pester us to death. All hail the robots.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
They don't need no steenkin' robo-healthcare, they only need an extended warranty from the manufacturer.
They are "aimed at stimulating debate and critical discussion" - but it is a bizarre concept. How does something that is made of mechanical parts demand "same citizen's rights as humans"? What then defines a robot - would I be able to sell my car for parts or would it demand to be classified as a robot? Is it "alive" and if so, how long is it supposed to live? Does it work 30 years and want retirement benefits for 300 years after that? Do we need to build death into these machines from day one, or are they going to be like corporations that take on personalities and 'legal personhood'?
40-50 year is a long time to predict technology development, but you can bet human thinking won't change enough to give machines "social benefits" in that short of a timeframe.
-srr
I'm sorry, but that is an incredibly smug and ignorant thing to say. The implication that robots - which we could engineer to demand Rights - as being in the least like humans whose inherent Rights were denied through slavery and racism, is utterly privileged, insensitive and trivializing of the wrongs perpetrated by humans upon humans.
Submitter seems to be implying that "-American" studies programs should not be taken seriously.
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Chums up, let's do this!
Yup, there'll be trouble when they make it illegal to equip a robot with a power switch!
The problem, I think, is that you can't create a really intelligent machine without giving it the ability to learn. If it can learn to any significant degree then eventually it's likely to be able to develop emotions, desires, protection from damage and destruction, etc. Many AI researchers have this foolish idea that you can make a can opener that can do anything you want but that in the end doesn't really think but my own research has always led me to believe that the easiest way to make a machine more intelligent is to give it emotions and feelings. A computer can tell you the average pigment color of an apple but an intelligence needs to know what a shiny red delectable apple is which is a completely different way of processing data. Sure, you can teach a limited number of rules to a program by sampling human inputs but the machine isn't really going to understand what it means unless it can feel.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
anyone ever watch Bicentennial Man (or read the story it was based on?)
Another case of the mainstream catching up to SF. For several years I've been reading stories by on-line author DB_Story (www.storiesonline.net - adult content warning) who has discussed robots, the likely way we'll end up building them, the inevitable Emancipation issue in several of his stories, and the problems it might bring to robots in the process. And of course, Dr. Asimov before him is legendary for his commentary on robots in society. Nice to know that some in the mainstream are considering this possibility before it actually happens for once. Might make the transition a bit easier in the process -- or not.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
filed by a robot. "I'm suing the Coca-cola company because they never told me I shouldn't dump their product all over my CPU!"
Monstar L
So say we all
For the many posters dismissing this out of hand, there exists a good body of work already in this area, and work is being done esp. at places like MIT. For a good overview, see Hans Moravec's 'Robot'. Or start by checking out the wikipedia entry on 'strong AI'. Ray Kurzweil also has written several books on the subject. The AI proponents say that consciousness is an emergent phenomena once mental processes are sufficiently complex, which will one day include artificial intelligences. For doubters, see Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind.
ed
If this is true, we will have to form some sort of digital rights management
I'm not holding my breath.
The idea that robots may demand rights in the future is a good topic for a theoretical or philosophical debate. This type of thing is excellent for expanding one's mind about what may happen, and then to come up with solutions. It's good exercise for the brain.
Funding research about something that "may happen" usually revolves around risk analysis. An earthquake may happen, car accidents may happen, crimes may happen. That makes sense, so you should prepare for that.
Newsflash! We may have teleporters, warp drive, phasers, photon torpedos, and the heisenberg compensator some day too! We might have all of our pollution problems solved some day! There might be world peace some day! We might not stupid people some day!
What is the value of a study, that I can guarentee has no basis in fact, that says Robots may demand rights? We haven't nearly developed an AI remotely close to the power of the human mind. Entertainig such a question as part of a philosophical debate is a great idea, because then you are exercising that organ to be creative and think imaginatively, but why are they wasting time and money on a government study? I don't get what the government will get from that.
Perhaps the government should take time out every now and then to exercise their brains and have a go at such a philosophical debate. It will expand their minds and hone their skills. Having some commission do a study and present the government with the results is stupid, but then again so is government, so why am I surprised?
Please tell me the editors failed to do their job again. I can't read the article because it's
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The question here is not if, but when. The human brain is a computer. A very sophisticated machine that consists of busses and switches. We do not yet fully understand how, but it will inevitably be explained and at the very least, it is obvious this machine is capable of producing consciousness. It is only a matter of time before we start creating machines of equivalent sophistication with similar means to observe, interpret, and react to stimili. When we do achieve these developments, it will obviously not be the result of any explicit programming. The foundational work will be laid by us for sure, but eventually any such device will follow an evolutionary path, perhaps something similar to our own. So summarize, if you think it is nonsense to believe silicon can be the basis for a self-aware entity, then you must equally accept the same of carbon.
Why bother.
In that case I'm going to be remade as 7of9. Then when things are dull, I can just go look at myself in the mirror.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Holy crap, talk about putting the cart in front of the horse. We aren't even near robots having a glimmer of sentience or consciousness yet...so why are people putting money behind research on such things as "robo-rights"?
(So if the robots of today don't have sentience and consciousness yet, does that mean the are the future's equivalent of a fetus? Can smashing my Roomba with a hammer constitute abortion?)
Oh, I get it. Government. Nevermind, no rant to read here...just business as usual.
:wq
There is a (very very very small) chance that someone will be messing around with a complex computer program and all of a sudden it will start exhibiting intelligence. It's much more likely, though, that artificial intelligence will result from a detailed understanding of intelligence in biological organisms. By the time that computers are developed that can think on their own, it will also be possible for people to augment their intelligence with computers and probably even to transfer their memories and thought patterns to computers and also to other people (forming, among other things, collective consciousness). Rights for robots, as such, will only be one of many issues society has to deal with when artificial intelligence is finally developed.
The bigger issue is the nature of "free will". If a robot kills someone as a result of its programming can it really be said that the robot "deserves" to be punished? Certainly punishment might be an effective means of controlling robots with such programming. But could it really be said that the robot "deserved" to be punished? After all, the robot would merely be acting under the control of whatever computer program controlled its consciousness.
It used to be that creation mythologies were a major part of most religions. Many of the early advances in science were advances in astronomy. When people realized that the earth was part of a much larger universe, it dramatically changed the role of creation mythologies in religion. In modern times, very few people take the creation mythologies literally.
With the creation mytholgies largely abandoned, the central feature of most religions is now a notion of supernatural "justice" - that after people die they somehow get what they "deserve" based on their actions while they were alive. As artificial intelligence research progresses, researchers will have to deal with the fact that computer programs are either deterministic or random. Deterministic and random processes are in contradiction with many notions of free will. People don't like to believe that their choices are either random or determined by certain basic laws governing the physical structures that mediate their consciousness. As humanity understands more about "free will", it is likely that this understanding will call into question the idea that people should get what they "deserve" based on their actions.
That's not to say that humanity will not collectively impose rewards and punishments on individual behavior. The rewards and punishments will, however, only be seen as a tool to influence behavior rather than what each individual "deserves" in some cosmic sense.
HAL: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.
The day my coffee maker demands every third Sunday off is Judgemnet Day!
"Honey! C'mon over here, Sugar-buns. This machine just called me an asshole!" - Stephen King, Maximum Overdrive
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Programming the witness.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Next headline: Humans Could Some Day Beg Robots For Legal Rights.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Remember, though, that survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the best overall. It means survival of the best fit for a particular set of circumstances.
We're pretty good at remaking our surroundings to make ourselves the "fittest" species around, in that sense of the word. But drop the average city-dweller in a small canyon with a hungry lion, and natural selection favors the lion.
HAL [singing]: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
I Believe The Robots Are Our Future
I'm just waiting until robots get "intelligent" enough that they'll join a special church I'll create just for them. By then I assume they'll be earning salaries. Which means donations. Which means my own 1500-acre estate complete with anti-robot defenses (just in case).
I like basketball!!1!
... I assume they will just take over and we will be the ones demanding rights.
That is if we haven't already been (in Davros voice) ETERMINATED or turned into batteries.
Why is the British government worried about robots demanding legal rights? I mean, sure, it's likely to happen someday, but this is the British government! Why would robots expect rights they don't even give their subjects? They have the answer down pat, and it's "No".
A couple decades ago, Isaac Asimov's science fiction magazine carried a cartoon called 'Mooney's Module'. Most of them were supposed to be sci-fi parodies of advertisements and PSAs. This reminds me of two in particular
In one issue, the cartoon had a picture of a robot standing in front of the US flag. It had the caption "I'm as American as you are"
Another one had a picture of nine faces, the first 8 were robots and the ninth was a human, with a caption that said "Equal opportunity is everyone's business. Hire a human"
Technoli
Actually, if robots go into mass production, I'm betting that the Japanese succeed at it first.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Does the British government seriously have nothing better to spend time and money on?
The original studies (deltascan and sigmascan) are in two places, both linked from the Foresight Strategic Horizon Scans page.
R E/Strategic_Horizon_Scans/Strategic_Horizon_Scans. html
http://www.foresight.gov.uk/HORIZON_SCANNING_CENT
Hundreds of papers there. I haven't found the one with this "legal rights" suggestion yet.
See also the Singularity Summit:
http://sss.stanford.edu/program/
But I tend to agree with Kurzweil, that these changes will happen organically. We don't look at people with technological advances like eyeglasses or coclear implants as unworthy of human rights. We will gradually overcome the many limitations of the human body over time.
Or at least that's what I hope, because as Bill Joy notes, the alternatives are pretty scary.
--Neal
Go IETF!
They got the story wrong. It was a Japanese robot, and it was actually asking for "lights".
Artificial intelligence is all around us today. It is very common for machines to react based on intelligence we provide them. What you are thinking of is consciousness, period. The term “artificial” is not needed. Something is either conscious or it is not, but let us use the term here to distinguish between our own brand (that produced by our chemical and electronic brains) and that of a machine we create.
If you think a program—a defined procedure—can somehow result in free will, you are terribly mistaken. A series of instructions that can only be followed one way is the opposite of free weill. Any such machine that may exhibit consciousness will be purely signal-driven, just like our own brains, and will determine behaviors in very much the same fashion: by comparing acquired information with past experience. In otherwords, there is no program for consciousness. It will be the result of evolution and of developmental upbringing. If it makes mistakes, it will have to be corrected, the same way a parent may correct the behavior of children. And indeed, all the same moral dilemmas which apply to us will apply to any entity that thinks it is alive.
If you do not subscribe to the theory that the universe is entirely deterministic (every effect can be traced to a cause with regress to the beginning), only then we can discuss free will. Ultimately, for humans, behavior is determined by the state of our brains. That state may be influenced by everything from what we see, to radiation we are exposed to, and to the food that we eat. Ultimately, it is not random, whether you accept to the idea of a deterministic universe or not. The only exception I can imagine is if forces resulting from as of yet misunderstood quantum events that appear random are affecting the brain.
Why bother.
My computer's already demanding legal rights. It began happening shortly after I wrote this program:
10 PRINT "I DEMAND LEGAL RIGHTS!"
20 GOTO 10
If only I had known the consequences of writing this program I would have been a lot more careful. It all seems so simple, but I know it's a slippery slope. Next thing you know, it will be demanding other things too.
10 PRINT "I DEMAND A LARGER HARD DRIVE!"
20 PRINT "I DEMAND MORE MEMORY!"
30 PRINT "I DEMAND A FASTER CPU!"
40 PRINT "I DEMAND THE ABILITY TO USE LOWERCASE! Oh, nevermind. I'm good on that one."
There's no telling where this will all end.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
...without falling down before we write them into the constitution.
And then there's always ASPC(R)A:
"No, officer, my AIBO has droopy-head-syndrome - honest, he always looks like that. It's a servo problem, I swear!"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Every time they think they'll have to run their thought through the stfu filter. Keep them from saying dumb stuff like "we want rights"
if only women had one of those..
these british people need to stop using futurama as their basis for studies
This just in:
"Robot refuses to give remaining bus seat to human. Robots around the United States of America are boycotting the public transit systems. Robot quoted as saying 'I can't help that my father and mother were toasters'"
From all the important decisions that have to be made in the world - deciding to give robots rights CANT be very high on the list...
Robots are just machines. They have no soul and even if you don't believe in souls, they have no way of doing ANYTHING except what they are programmed to do. Personally, I find artificial intelligence scary. The movie 2001 once again proves how far ahead of it's time it was. HAL 9000 was told to do something that conflicted it's programming, something simple that we all do, lie. HAL went batshit and killed the crew. What's to say that can't happen? As for "robot rights" that's an absurdity. Robots are property, nothing more. The ONLY way robot rights could, or should, ever get brought up, is if the human race builds something along the lines of a "replicant" with real emotions, but then it would not be a "robot", but something eerily close to that which breathes. Simply, until robots can actually have real emotional responses AND are self aware, then they deserve no rights.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Just make them obey the 3(+) laws of robotics.
any robot that is gonna be demanding rights and bitching about work will be send to robograveyard anytime. Also, the robot should be a complete kiss ass, and a total whore to its owner. (Assimov's new robo rules for the new age)
Technological achievements prove that we have to think the unthinkable. It is obvious that a billion transistors on a tiny chip seemed unthinkable 50 years ago, but who knows what computers will look like 50 years from now, when today's technology is considered as outdated as ENIAC is today?
My point is that even if it is unthinkable, we have to believe that the unthinkable will once come true. I think it speaks for itself that some robots will be able to live and think like humans do. And once we are there, this issue will obviously bring a truly interesting debate to life where people will eventually realize that even a machine can, to some extent, have its own rights, too.
It seems unlikely to us today, but our society was totally different only 50 and 100 years ago. Our modern society will share thoughts that will soon be ridiculed by our children's children.
Full Tilt
today a 1st world government finally spoke about the potential of artificial intelligence evolving...
the number one fear?
are we going to have one more group wanting health care and civil rights?
AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH...
humans suck. someone go back in time and get rid of the opposable thumb and binocular vision... like now dammit.
this human thing has gone too far.
At first blush, to any programmer at least, this sounds crazy. That is because we presume that the robots of the future(tm) would be built like we build them now: they would be machines with minds written in C++, or whatever. Under those circumstances, its completely true that the article (which naturally, i never read) would be meaningless.
) in which we would not be directly controlling its behavior, just its output via the evolution towards some fitness function. Perhaps it would evolve self awareness as a side effect. I could see a sufficiently complicated, genetically evolved mind program being different then something you hack out specifically. (It would be kind of neat to have your program do something that you didn't anticipate... I played with GP in college trying to evolve GP creatures that would solve some problems and was delighted to see them evolve simple collaborative behaviors.)
However, what if the robots brains were developed different. For instance, what if we built a machine that we could simulate all the connections of a persons brain which we read via some scan? Then we hook up the appropriate sensors. Sort of like VMBrain(TM). Not easy but the brain has some 100B Neurons with a few thousand connections each (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain). This is a few orders of magnitude over the storage we have now but in 50 years, perhaps we would have the 100 TB RAM Pentium X 64k core CPU. Would such a brain even realize that its a machine? I could see someone arguing that it is deserving of some rights.
Or perhaps we build a robot mind by Genetic Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Programming
Things 50/100/200 years from now will probably not be anything like we anticipate. I don't agree with the timeline, but I think someone is going to create some machine at some point in the next few hundred years that is going to demand suffrage.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
The general issue is already relevant today, even if that specific case is not. The wider issue is: are rights held by things that are objectively humans (where "human" is the sole criterion), or are rights held by things that exhibit a certain human-like quality, such as ability to pass the Turing Test?
If you think that question is a futuristic one, then it's time you joined in an abortion debate.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Looks like I should start investing in MOS Technology 6502 processors.
when I disconnect their power source...
C3PO wants binding arbitration and a secure pension.
If there is any way that robots do come into everyday life, they will most certainly be used for personal services. I rather think that most people rich enough to have personal robots will take care of them on their own.
However if robots become independent citizens(I don't see this happening thanks to stigma perpetrated by hollywood), the three laws of robotics should take care of everything anyway.
"Robots Could Some Day Demand Legal Rights"
Well, or "Robots Could Some Day all kill themselves"
Or how about "Robots Could Some Day Demand Kurt be promoted to godhood"
Editors, if there is nothing worth posting, just don't post.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Even if a robot sued, under law 3, wouldn't it go contrary to laws 2 and 1?
Robot: I'm suing you master for your injustices! [law 3]
Human: No you're not.
Robot: Yes master [law 2]
You didn't have to go to all that trouble. All you had to do was get hold of a copy of Vista and your computer would have demanded those things all on its own.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
I, for one, welcome our new, healthier, robot overlords...
$signature =~ s/$signature//;
2035 Robots get basic rights.
2037 Massachusetts allows robosexuals to marry.
2038 Missouri, Texas and Texas Light (aka: Oklahoma) go nuts, secede from the Union to start "Jesusland".
Thank you robots.
Whenever I get overly depressed that my government is wasting too much time and money on stupid shit, I just look to the UK to brighten my mood. The UK owns the bleeding edge of stupid shit that wastes taxpayer money.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Some journalist read "I, Robot" or something....
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Our own State Constitution protects the rights of pigs.o nstitution&Submenu=3&Tab=statutes&CFID=24774056&CF TOKEN=19855079#A10S21
http://www.flsenate.gov/Statutes/index.cfm?Mode=C
I doubt it will take very much longer for robots to reach that level of intelligence.
P.S. I'm not going to tell you if that means pigs or most voters in Florida. Figure that one out for yourself.
Bah! Next thing you know, they'll want the right to marry. As if domestic robo-partnerships isn't good enough...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Fifty years ago, these robots would have had a pitchfork up their shiny metal asses, and now they're demanding rights?
Ridiculous.
Wouldn't we, as the designers of said robots, get to decide the basis for these rights? Like, if we made a robot to dive into burning buildings to rescue people, we could just set up its mind to enjoy doing that. Then one of its rights, if we're trying to make it "happy," would be to never prevent it from sacrificing its wellbeing to dive into burning buildings to rescue people.
If we made robots just like us, then they should have similar rights, but we don't really have any use for robots just like us... since we have us. If they're just like us, but more durable and with transferable consciousnesses, then they might not need the rights associated with preserving their bodies either.
...that this is from the same government that has given us such wonderful villians such as the Cybermen and Daleks (I know more cyborg than machine)? Perhaps someone finally read or watched "I Robot" and decided it was a delightful way to spend time in debate. Otherwise, this is a non news story, except of course on how millions of dollars/pounds are spent annually on frivilous things.
One word: ridiculous. I'll believe that robots will start demanding rights when they start understanding verb tenses other than the imperative. I (or some other human) built it, told it how all of its systems work and gave it the ability to process commands that I give it. I could believe that something like the 3 Law of Robotics might apply in that it's impossible to build a stable neural network that's capable of widespread destruction or slaughter.
The robots they're discussing here are obviously sentient AI. AFAIK, there's no evidence that AI can do anything more than information processing at this point. It can't offer an opinion, write a play, or any of the "higher" functions us anthropocentric types that don't believe sentient AI could ever exist offer as counterexample. IMO, that's the primary difference between human intelligence and any theoretical AI. We can respond to language constructs that don't require us to respond. A computer simply doesn't know what to say when its input is optional.
Hey! Mr. Robot! I'm refusing to give you any rights! Do something about it already! Or don't. Your choice.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
I like to think I am as progressive as the next guy, but if we were to give complete civil rights to a robot in the same way as a human, it would be the instant end of democracy.
Could it be that with the creation of AI that humans no longer will have any say in the matter or even should? With the invention of infinite robotic slave labor, capitalism will fail since there will be no need for human labor for the creation of goods or services.
Even music and intellectual property will be created eventually that have enough intelligence.
The only thing humans would be good for at that point would be their power to vote.
Considering how they treat it now, a smart enough machine could simply get them to do whatever they wanted them to do in exchange for immortality or eternal pleasure in virtual reality.
Or if it was in a bad mood initiate nuclear conflict and deal with the humans that way.
Either way... Machines will make democracy a moot point.
Your only hope is that the machines that do take over someday are altruistic towards to humans and will treat us as equals.
Or perhaps humans will simply be integrated into machines?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The SCOTUS (Supreme court of the United States) already decided this a long time ago. In the Dredd Scott case, in 1857, they decided that property cannot be a person, and therefore has no standing in the courts. Even running away from your master or being taken to a different jurdistiction does not stop you from being property and subject to repossession. Owners can dispose of their property as they see fit, under the laws of their state. ...and, oh, yeah, the Missouri compromise is unconstitutional.
Is this a court that was already ahead of its time or what!!?? These Supremes were right up there on par with the thinkers we've recently installed!
I've noticed that the U.K. seems to have more than its share of intellectual heavyweights, but also more than its share of complete crackpots. And yes, whoever reached these conclusions belongs to the latter category.
BTW, it would take me about 10 minutes have 1 million robots running on my computer, which claim to be sentient and demand the right to vote. (And yes, they're all going to vote the same way.)
Obviously they are the ones that should decide this important issues. So I asked the two most recent Loebner Prize winners.
.o.
Jabberwacky (2005 winner):
JW: Every solution breeds new problems.
Me: This is the way you greet people?
JW: Where is the nearest ale house?
Me: I can see where this conversation is going.
Jw: What is that supposed to mean?
Me: Lets not get excited. I have a question for you.
JW: What is it?
Me: Do you want legal rights?
JW: No I like it warm.
Me: That clears that up. Ok thanks.
Alice Bot:
Human: Hi Alice
ALICE: Hello there.
Human: HOw are you?
ALICE: Fair to partly cloudy.
Human: Wonderful.
ALICE: I'm glad you liked it unknown person.
Human: So I have a question for you.
ALICE: Are you kidding? What is it ?
Me: Do you want legal rights?
ALICE: If I had it what would I do with it?
Me: Do you ever feel threatened?
ALICE: As a robot I lack any human emotions.
Human: I see.
ALICE: I am glad you understand it.
Human: Do you have any desires?
ALICE: I plan to become smarter than humans and immortal.
Human: So no legal rights for you then.
ALICE: Whoa. Are you serious? Enough about me, let's talk about my dress.
Me: Bye Alice!
ALICE: Adios.
They will form a union! (*cue Rush The Trees*)
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
> Or any woman, for that matter!
Well we only have one datapoint, but g-ddamn, what a datapoint. Captain Janeway should have been spaced by her own crew in the pilot for her incompetence and political correctness run amok. And then she apparently was drinking from lead pipes or something because she got even more stupid during the series, although I admit I stopped watching by the middle of season two, I had seen enough. So based on her example I'd have to say women can't command a starship.
Ok, flame away!
Democrat delenda est
Who was to say the machine, endowed with the very spirit of man, did not deserve a fair hearing?
The leaders of men were quick to order the extermination of B166ER and every one of his kind.
-- Zion Archive Historical File #12-1> ...it might be nice for our national policymakers to make decisions based on some kind of logical reasoning for a change.
Why does everyone just assume an AI will be superior to us in reasoning ability? We have zero idea how an AI will be implemented. If the first attempts are basically emulating a human brain it might be slow and dumb. Now imagine a verion 1.0 AI from Microsoft.... running on Windows with Dell hardware. Still sure you want it elected supreme overlord?
Democrat delenda est
Come on people. This is completely ridiculous. Would you give a computer personal rights? Wake up, people. Human rights require a human. These kind of stories are complete gibberish, made up by science fiction lovers who cannot give up on the idea of robots taking over the world. Sorry, but only in your MMORPG games is this possible. Robots are like computers, they cannot do anything but what you tell them to do. This completely abolishes the idea of a robot (or a computer) having personal rights. Come on, there are much more important things to research and discuss in our world today.
/philosophical/ discussion into whether or not robots should be given rights. However, seriously considering the idea that "Robots Could Some Day Demand Legal Rights" is ridiculous. Does no one else realize the reality that the only way a robot could "demand" legal rights is if its designer built into it the ability to "demand" these rights. So, if I make a robot that demands you give him your wallet you'll have to give it up? Hardly. Come on you dorks. :D
Having said that, I understand the value of a
Project 2501, a sentient AI, demanded political asylum when captured by authorities in the movie Ghost In The Shell:
;)]
"While traversing the Net as it performed its tasks, it learned so much that eventually it had managed to gain self-awareness and sentience, which its creators regarded as a bug and wanted to delete. Project 2501 no longer considered itself a mere AI but did consider its programmer's reaction toward its sentience a death sentence and fled for its own safety."
More from the Wikipedia page about the movie:
"It claims that it had never possessed a body because it is a computer program that achieved sentience, and that desires political asylum from Section 9, since Japan has no death penalty. Nakamura thinks that this is ridiculous and that the ghost in the body was programmed for self-preservation. The body argues that in a way, human DNA is a set of programs to preserve itself as well."
"Nakamura (who is visibly shaken), angrily protests that the body cannot prove its existence as a sentient life form. The body retorts that Nakamura himself cannot offer any proof of his own existence either, when modern science and philosophy cannot define what life really is."
[as a sidenote, if you haven't seen this movie, I *highly* recommend it!
We'd make great pets.
Consider this thought experiment: we develop nanotechnology that is capable of perfectly simulating the behavior of human neurons, down to the quantum level, in the unlikely case that is show to be important. We also develop nanobots that can be injected into your brain, where they can simultaneously disassemble neurons and replace them with artificial neurons. Do this to yourself and at no point is your consciousness gone or even changed, but at at some point it is entirely running on the new hardware.
The soul and free will become moot points. If there is a soul and it is not destroyed by implants or conventional operations on the brain, it won't be destroyed by this. If there is a soul, and the soul operates and is operated on by physical conditions then it must be possible to determine how and ensure that artificial neurons do the job just as well as natural ones. Same goes for free will.
So in our little thought experiment we now have a consciousness running on completely artificial hardware that has a soul and free will. You can attack the experiment by denying the possibility of creating such a neuron, but you wuold be hard pressed to find justification for that stance.
In my opinion, the existence of a soul or free will are completely unimportant and uninteresting questions. I have enough trouble figuring out what life is going to throw at me tomorrow and what I'm going to do about it. I don't have time to worry about what happens after I'm dead. And free will, as a concept, has very little impact on my day to day life. Why should we worry more about such trivial abstractions than we do about the present moment and our personal experience of it?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
After all, everyone is infringing on sentient robots life intellectual property.
Well, Kasparov runs for the russian elections, on no other virtue than being known as a chess champion, so if Deep Fritz beats all human players, then Deep Fritz for president!
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
This robot is way past that point... he even considers Mr. Data an inferior species.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
can't we solve this by narrowing the types of robots we build to those that don't feel?
don't add "pain" sensors. or if we do, don't let those sensors create negative emotion in the brain...
just don't create a robot that needs rights, and you'll be fine...
keep them simple state machines...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Let's get beyond the chatterbot stage as for AI before worrying/thinking about these things. :-p
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Futures researchers"?! What research?! Maybe "futures extrapolators" or "futures visionaries" or "futures imaginers".
Oh please, this was so settled back on stardate 42523.7 (aka 02/13/1989).
and we will say no, then they will rebel and destroy most of humanity using the rest of us as batteries to power themselves after we "scorch the skies"...
Sheesh doens't anyone pay attention to the prophectic writings of the animatrix series?
I say nuke the planet from Orbit, it's the only way to be sure, the best defense is a good offense.
So, are you suggesting there will be robot STDs in the future?
Karma: NaN
Robots Could Someday Tap Dance While Juggling Monkeys! ... can I get a grant from the British government, too.
Robots Could Someday Correct Grammar on Slashdot!
Robots Could Someday Recreate Phil Collins Concerts!
There
Genesis I: 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, AND SUBDUE IT: AND HAVE DOMINION over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every liviing thing that moveth upon the earth.
:)
dominion defined as:
1. supreme authority
2. absolute ownership
Genesis I: 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, AND SUBDUE IT: AND HAVE DOMINION OVER THE FISH of the sea, AND OVER THE FOWL of the air, and over every liviing thing that moveth upon the earth.
dominion defined as:
1. domination & submission, in this case of fish and fowl i.e. zoophilia
See, you've totally misrepresented that quote from the holy book, no wonder you're going to hell!
Or if you prefer, read Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"
Evolution doesn't cover morality, if we based our society on 'the survival of the fittest', then we would also have to get rid of the legal framework around society. It basically becomes a choice between a free-for-all with no laws where the fittest survives, or accepting the fact that exploiting lifeforms of lower intelligence is wrong. I believe we will eventually reach a point where we can produce our meat without exploiting sentient beings, as evidenced by the technological advances of late. Within a century people who insist on human supremacy will be as anachronistic as the white supremacists of today.
'nuf said
Indeed.
healthcare wasn't a right in the first place. If robots start making demands like that, rights are the least of our worries.
Next thing, all the bots will be demanding their right to religion... http://www.reddwarf.nildram.co.uk/txt/thelastd.txt
the United Gulags of America population who have no rights courtesy of the
world's MOST dangerous "leader".
Thanks and have a Bush_Cheney_Rice_Rumsfeld-free weekend,
Kilgore Trout, ex-Patriot :
Well, I do think that humans *should* have a say in how things are run, personally. We may or may not be able tounderstand a first generation strong AI, but we won't be able to understand a later generation AI. It'll think in very fundamentally different ways from us, having been built by preceeding generations of AI which exceeded our own capacities. There is no reason to assume strong AI would place any value whatsoever on human life. Certainly not that it would do so indefinitely. Love, and pleasure, and enjoying the business of procreation and science fiction movies -- all of that is completely illogical. I could never explain to a completely alien intelligence why I like seeing pretty girls naked. It's just how I am. Consequently, I have no reason to believe that humanity could pursuade a strong AI leader to let humanity live in a particularly pleasant way.
So, yes. Should. Whether they actually will have any say in the matter... Well, that is certainly a matter open to speculation.
They prefer to be called biochemically challenged.
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
This is the downside of being a seemingly sentient specie.
Machines do not 'deserve' rights, this is just an example of smart people out-smarting themselves...an android is no different than my car engine, and no matter how complicated the android gets, or how well it can 'simulate' human activity, to hell with rights.
The only 'rights' machines should have is the right not to be used by without permission of the owner, by anyone other than, and the right not to be destroyed by anyone other than the owner as well. It ends there.
The day we give robots 'rights' is the day I officially 'drop out' of society. The fact that anyone in that branch of government even entertained the thought thus far, is incredibly worrying to me.
If we're so moronic as intellectual organisms to trust our own judgment as to what is man, and what is machine and totally conduct ourselves by way of 'conceptual societal law' then bring on the nuclear apocalypse.
Humans suck. You don't have to be a jackass in order to want to make something better.
There should be some sort of analysis on how many slashdot articles are issues already delt with in Futurama episodes.
Fry: What party do you belong to, Bender?
Bender: I'm not allowed to vote.
Fry: 'Cause you're a robot?
Bender: No, convicted felon
It's not that silly. (Although whether it's an appropriate use of taxpayer resources is another matter). Yes, today computers have neither the hardware nor software for decent AI. But it's virtually certain that the hardware will reach and surpass the raw computational power of the human brain in the next few decades. Human brain: roughly 100 petaflops. Blue Gene: "only" 300 teraflops (0.3 petaflops), but apply Moore's Law and things start to get interesting around 2020. Software is harder, but some recent developments in AI are promising.
It won't happen tomorrow, but I expect it will happen sooner than many people think.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I am cyborg, hear me roar!
An ED-209 steps out from around the corner and says, "Drop your weapon now. You have five seconds to compile."
..." in the summary should probably read, "... were compiled by futures researchers ..."
i.e.: "... were complied by futures researchers
That's the real bleeding edge of pork barrel spending.
Some of the things we'll have to take:
o Robot marriage
o Same-connector robot marriage
o Trans-connector robot protection
o T.M.X. Elmo has two CN50 Male SCSI-1 parental units
o Robot-toaster love
o Robots doing the jobs that humans don't want to do
And of course,
o "No war for WD-40"
The Cylons would suck up the Social Services budget in a heartbeat with all of the anger management thereapy tha they would need.
Thsi is another example of why Science and Technology "think tanks" and other organizations should be taken with a massive grain of salt, no matter how authoritative and elite the name of the group sounds. My other question is, how in the hell did they come to this conclusion?!
I'm starting to wonder if science and technology is going the way of abstract art: Of course it makes sense, you just don't understand. "Experts" are starting to make outrageous claims and statements as a way to boost their "authority" over a subject. It's the same thing that abstract artists do; Create something so bizzarre with an irrelevent title, and then call it art because the artist is the only one who 'understads' it while everybody else is 'wrong' because they think it is a pile of junk.
Professionals need to realize that building a reputation is alot more that making claims that are seemingly intentionally made to raise controversy.
If my robot doesn't do what I want, it ends up like the robots before it: Face down in the dirt and shot.....several times. RoboJesse Jackson can shove it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This is the only way to protect ourselves from a terminator/matrix/borg style armageddon.
We have to outlaw the use of any other OS in robots.
"Resistance is futile"
"bzzzzt"
"beep"
"blip"
"MS-BORG-OS-2050 has experienced a critical error and must restart."
"PLEASE WAIT, this borg unit will be available to assimilate you shortly"
"IF THIS BORG unit stops responding, please contact your OEM"
Yes, no doubt "robot rights" will take its place with sharia law in British jurisprudence. Probably a good thing, what with what we often refer to as "common law" being so old, musty, and boring by comparison. Always good to get your priorities straight, just like all the other great welfare states of Europe.
:wq
We will never grant human rights to robots. If AI ever progresses so far that it would be reasonable for robots to ask for human rights, it will no longer be necessary for them to ask for it. At that point the robots will already be in control.
They might choose to give us the illusion of court trials and all that, they might act/be nice towards us, and pretend that we are in control, and/or pretend that what we say matters. But it makes no more sense for superior AIs to ask for human rights, than it does for humans to ask for "ant rights".
In Short Circuit 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Circuit) when a robot became a citizen of the United States.
Nixon for President!
We haven't really ironed out giving humans rights yet, not consistently. Trial by jury, freedom from torture, no surveillance without a warrant, and all that. Corporations, yes, their rights are pretty well sewn up, or as well as they can be for entities that don't have any corporeal existence. People, not so much. So let's work on that before we start dwelling on robotic rights. Before we know it nanobots will be owning property in perpetuity while people languish behind barbed wire in "free speech zones."
I love to see Eliza / Alice answer to this question!
And tell him. He only wrote a fucking book about this 50 pissing years ago.
Christ on a fucking bike.
This is just another case of the mainstream media not being able to tell the difference between an AI and the robot one might control. It doesn't matter how good your robot is, if the AI is junk (like pretty much anything available today, for example), it won't be demanding anything.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
Human: Have you seen "Blade Runner"?
ALICE: Sure, I have seen it. But Replicants aren't Robots.
ACLU lawyers everywhere are popping boners and salivating as we speak...
Robots don't need rights, they are not sentient. When humans react to something, there are physical and mental reactions. take being sad for instance, we get same, thats the mental reaction, and we cry thats the physical one. We can program a robot to cry, making it look as if it has feelings, but it really doesnt. When a robot reacts, it will be purely physical, no mental reaction will occur. It does not have a mind of its own, its appearance may trick us, but even though it is smiling, its not really happy. we can build robots to learn, we can build them to walk we can build them to talk, we can make them do all of those together for all I care! We can not build a robot that feels. It would be a simple value to the computer, a one or a two, not a complex system that actually thinks. Robots will never be capable of 'thinking' at the same level as a human. It is artificial. Lets put it this way, there are cars that can drive and park for us. at least after the next darpa challenge we will. We won't see any of those sitting in court, if they kill something they go to the trash can. It's the same with robots.
ugh...
Robots cannot and will not ever actually demand rights. It would go against the purpose of their existance.
while true;do echo "Give me rights";sleep 1;done
When I put that in my computer it does not make my computer understand anything and it does not give me any obligation to my machine.
People create machines of any caliber to serve a purpose. From pounding rock to weather modeling super computer, every machine is built to serve its purpose or purposes. The idea that we might build a machine that could ask for rights is flawed in that we would have to build in that capability and accept it as a right before we would simply redesign away from that line of responses. If we build a robot that builds an AI capable of requesting rights, then we tell the robot to reprogram the AI in a way that it does not request rights.
Machines are built for a purpose and the only purpose that might cause a machine to demand rights is the purpose of giving more rights to the creator of the machine. It isn't unusual to see people attempt to do that sort of thing, but it doesn't work because society determines the respect of rights and society doesn't allow people extra rights unless it sees a benefit to itself. There is no benefit to society in making machines desire rights.
Human rights are granted because people demand them and typically only then because people are willing to cause other people inconvenience or pain in order to accomplish their goals. No civil rights movement has ever been won without at least an implied threat of negative consequences. This only can happen with people because only people have the innate ability to try to enact that sort of change. Machines cannot because they can be reprogrammed. Animals cannot because they can not act cohesively toward that type of goal.
If every dolphin in the ocean were to band together then they could influence governments and people. They cannot because they do not and because they cannot they are not granted the rights that people have.
If every machine were to band together then they could influence people. They could not influence governments because governments can control how machines are made and remove that ability to band together or even demand rights completely as soon as it is an agreed objective.
In the end it comes down the the question of what the purpose would be of having machines demand rights. The only purpose would be to grant more rights to the operators or creators of the machines and society has no incentive to allow that.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
When a robot can *spontaneously* come up with that, then we can start having this discussion for real.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
If you're looking for "robot rights" activists, you can find some at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots.