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

[s20451]

The whole concept of animal rights is intellectually bankrupt, because there is no way we can get them to respect each other's rights, or even understand their own rights. The "animal rights" movement is all about animal management, and they are being dishonest (deliberately or otherwise) by characterizing it any other way.

On the other hand, it is possible in principle to program a robot to respect the rights of humans and other robots, so I would say this has more of a philosophical leg to stand on.