Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights?

holy_calamity writes "Hot on the heals of a UK government report that predicted robots would demand citizens rights within fifty years, an Arizona state lawyer has suggested that sub-human robots should have rights too. Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical — would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog? And can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"

Comments

Re:Fake

[Daniel_Staal]

Not only are they on the wrong track for AI, but they are actually on the wrong track for this problem as well.

The base reason you don't kick a dog is because it hurts the dog, and the dog can't easily be repaired, in either programming or mechanicals. (Both of which are harmed.) You have damaged the dog and nothing can be done about it. So we have rules about letting you do it.

Both programing and mechanicals of a robot, for any bot we can design today, are reparable. So there is an easier solution: If you damage a robot, you have to pay the owner to have the damage fixed, and the downtime for the repair.

Then if we ever manage to make 'smart' robots that could ask for rights, we just assign them some self-ownership. Then if you damage one, you have to pay it to so it can fix the damage. At this point the problem becomes self-solving, especially as a robot's time becomes worth more.