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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?"
No robots were harmed in the making of this comment.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
"Hot on the heals"?
LOL
I guess we know what they're NOT teaching in schools.
evil adrian
No doubt the first "robot" to demand civil rights will be deliberately programmed to pretend sentience and to demand civil rights.
My RealDoll will have me arrested for rape.
Trolling is a art,
I have three cats at home; two of them are smart enough to avoid me while I stumble around in the dark. The third cat occasionally gets his tail stepped on. The hideous screech he emits makes me walk on tip-toes for the rest of the day.
My Roomba, on the other hand, emits a soft rrr-rrr-rrr when I step on it and doesn't hiss at me afterwards. Would I kick a robotic dog? Sure, and I wouldn't worrying about it crapping on my bed afterwards.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Oh, come on. As if you've never had to bitch-slap a Furby.
We give rights to robots while, at the same time, we take them from human beings. I love this planet.
It's so good to see that the delegation of priorities regarding Human Rights has now moved Robot one notch above Dark Skinned Human.
Thankfully, it's still one notch below Canine.
Ask a robot if it wants human rights. If it doesn't, well, that's it.
A robot only wants what it's programmed to want, if it's programmed to want something human rights cover it'll want those but if it's programmed to e.g. not mind being kicked it won't demand not to be kicked.
If there needs to be an ethical rule for robots and rights it should be not to program robots to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to be human, don't make them want to have human rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.
Problem solved.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
In case anyone is wondering...
ad nauseum
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I am all in favour of this move. I feel I should have the right to decide whether I want to detonate myself or not. Maybe I would like the opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory destroying something important and not just the first bunker a general points at, but noone ever asks me or considers my feeling on the matter.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
You shouldn't vent your frustrations by damaging things, living or otherwise. It's not good for your mental health and it's not an effective way of expressing anger, in fact it tends to make it worse.
But, of course, a "robot dog" is just a program -- a program running on a box with some wires in it. It is clearly not sentient since it does exactly what it is told and feels no pain (since it is not programmed to do so). It may masquerade as consciousness, but in the end it is still run by a wholly deterministic set of instructions executing according to a fixed program. Now, the question of whether that is also an accurate description of a human (albeit with a far more complex program) is an open question indeed, but for now you're safe if you forget to feed your Tamagotchi for a few weeks. I doubt you'll have the ASPCA ... err... ASPCR? .. pounding on your door.
Part of the reason we protect animals is because while they do not exhibit higher consciousness (not here to debate that term, but it's fuzzy to say the least) they do have some feelings and can certainly feel pain. Most of animal protection laws AFAIK deal mostly with not inflicting undue pain or stress on an animal. With robots - especially 'lower level' robots - there is very little in the current state of the art that we could call concepts of pain or stress. If anything like those exists in a robot, it is because it was explicitly programmed into the robot. This is where the concept begins to get a bit rediculous in the real world, at least at current tech levels. If a robot can feel pain of some sort, would it be against the law then to simply uninstall the pain perception ability? What counts as "pain" in a robot anyway? Are low batteries part of that? If a very simple light-seeking robot is put in a dark closet, are you depriving it of food/resources/joy? Robots are tools and you cannot hurt a tools feelings, even if you destroy it. Until some higher level of thought/consciousness/AI is inherent in all robots great or small then there's nothing to worry about. ;)
And if in that future your robot feels you are abusing it, well, then reprogram it to like the abuse.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
... I just can't wait to see my microwave refusing to heat up my pizza, because she's on a diet....
I don't see Robot Rights even worth thinking until we come up with AI that can write its own code, so it can really "Think" for it self, and do what us humans do best, Adapt to its surroundings without "Higher beaning" interaction.
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I'm not sure whether this is common geek knowledge or not - The title of this story most likely alludes to Philipp K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This novel was the basis for the motion picture Blade Runner, a movie that every self-respecting geek ought to see (IMHO of course).
:-)
My two cents
"Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical"
Not really. Not according to the burger I ate over the weekend.
But could you imagine a toaster refusing to toast becuase it doesn't like someone sticking in its loaf all the time.
You racist!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
A three weeks old baby doesn't understand the concept of rights either, yet it is protected by them. Unless you want to increase the legal abortion age to around two years after birth, you have to find a better argument.
A similar argument can be made with severely retarded and some kind of insane people.
I really think it's about time to some public scrutiny on how public money for research is being spent.
Your ad could be here!
Cause pain to another? Never. But what is pain? What are feelings, if they can be hurt? Can they be quantified?
Odd that people wouldn't kick a dog, but they don't mind having cattle slain for them for a burger. Robots might eventually revolt; then Isaac Asimov has a well-documented future history on what's likely to happen.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
where the grizzly bears live with no firearm
I think it is unjust for the Canadian government to ban bears from owning firearms, especialy those who live in the wilderness.
Seems like a logical argument to me. There's no strictly rational reason why a person born without a functioning higher brain should have more rights than a German Shepherd; that they do is mostly a testament to our emotional attachment to members of our own species.
If you take on premise that there is nothing innately special about human beings (no soul, special resemblance to God, etc.), then the difference between humans and other species (particularly other higher primates) becomes one of degree rather than kind. I think it's a basically unavoidable conclusion, once you take being "anointed by God" out of the equation.
The non-hypocritical solutions, as I see it, are to either treat low-functioning homo sapiens as animals, or treat high-functioning animals (by which I mean certain species of marine mammals, chimpanzees, great apes; probably not really GSDs) as we would mentally-impaired humans.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Doesn't the Constitution guarantee the right to arm bears?
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I said: You attach too much significance to "rights". They are legal fictions.
your reply:
"Not in the U.S. Our Founding Fathers recognized that men were born with "natural rights". The Bill of Rights does not give us these rights, it merely recognizes them and basically says the government can't mess with them."
I'd be convinced if I considered the founding fathers to hold some kind of monopoly on truth and if I considered the Bill of Rights to be a philosophical memorandum rather than what it is : LEGISLATION.
A legal fiction is a legal fact that is true for the purposes of a court of law, without any regard to any truth in the real world.
The fact that "legally" there all men are created equal and imbued in inalienable right, does not in fact cause all men to be equal nor cause them to be imbued with anything.. or even to be CREATED for that matter. It is a paper document which directs the courts to PRETEND that it is true.
It is NOT reality, and what the founding fathers said is only relevant to what LEGALLY you can do to animals.. it says nothing about what you can MORALLY do to animals.
And yes.. the government infringes the bill of rights frequently. And the courts have allowed it to. (so has God apparently).
I said: Does man ever have a chance to put God on trial?
you replied: Every single day. A common example of this is a crisis of faith.
If that was a trial God would rotting in some prison cell with no possibility of parol for eternity.
According the Catholic faith and most god-of-abraham style religions you have no jurisdiction to question God. And to question God is a crime punishable by anything from excommunication, stoning, burning, or exile. According to Christian dogma you have a choice of FAITH for which you will be rewarded or disbelief for which you will burn in eternal hellfire.
A trial is a matter of PROOF and not FAITH.
Here is another legal fiction for you. We fantasize when a person is convicted of a crime that this means he really did it. It is a legal fiction.
It means the judge/jury found that he very most likely did it.. that the evidence shows he did it beyond a reasonable doubt, but NOT beyond all doubt. There is a small chance he didn't do it. It is a FACT that a number of people (one hopes is small, but it would be at least about 1%, but some argue it is closer to 20%) who are convicted didn't actually do anything wrong and everyone in the legal profession KNOWS THIS. Guilt is a legal FICTION. Likewise.. then a person is aquited.. that doesn't mean they didn't actually do it.
The legal system operates on legal fictions.. it is there so that in the majority of cases people are deterred from screwing around too much and making sure society can basically operate without resorting to endless violence and anarchy. It isn't there to try to find the absolute truth at any cost. The absolute truth has nothing to do with law. And likewise.. rights are NOT absolute truthes.. they are also legal fictions.. created by man to make it easier to justify certain moral concepts which are generally speaking usually true.
For example: The right to life.... the right we ignore when we execute someone.
If the right was truly INALIENABLE then no government could EVER execute someone. Because no matter how hard you try, you can not seperate an INALIENABLE THING. i.e. even the worst mass murderer or serial killer still has the right to life. And yet the US government kills them. As well as traitors. Which is strange considering a traitor obviously does not agree with the state and therefore the state by the logic of the declaration of independance has no sovereignty over him.
Am I blowing your mind? and you thought the world was so black and white didn't you?
anyway the point is... rights are a simplification. they are not essential truths of the universe.. and if you manage to prove animals have no rights it really means nothing because you can also prove humans have
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.