South Korea Drafting Ethical Code for Robotic Age

goldaryn writes "The BBC is reporting that the South Korean government is working on an ethical code for human/robot relations, 'to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa'. The article describes the creation of the Robot Ethics Charter, which 'will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. [...] It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer.'"

Comments

Will the next step be "robot rights"?

[Opportunist]

Because one thing's quite blatantly clear, robots are by their very definition slaves. They are owned, they exist to do work we don't want to do (or which is hazardous), they don't get paid and they are only given what's needed for their sustainance, they can't own property etc.

I fear the day when we create the first truely sentient robot. Because then we will have to deal with that very question: Does a robot have rights? Can he make a decision?

And I'd be very careful how to word the charta. We have seen that the "three laws" ain't safe.

Re:Will the next step be "robot rights"?

[ubergenius]

If we ever created a truly sentient robot, it would have to be given rights. That's not debatable.

What is debatable is, when do we know a robot is sentient? We barely have a definition for sentience, much less a method for identifying it's existence in a machine. Until we figure that out, it will be near impossible to tell if a robot is sentient or just really well programmed.