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Social Robots May Gain Legal Rights, Says MIT Researcher
dcblogs writes "Social robots — machines with the ability to do grocery shopping, fix dinner and discuss the day's news — may gain limited rights, similar to those granted to pets. Kate Darling, a research specialist at the MIT Media Lab, looks at this broad issue in a recent paper, 'Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots.' 'The Kantian philosophical argument for preventing cruelty to animals is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions. Granting them protection may encourage us and our children to behave in a way that we generally regard as morally correct, or at least in a way that makes our cohabitation more agreeable or efficient.' If a company can make a robot that leaves the factory with rights, the marketing potential, as Darling notes, may be significant."
makes me want to damage social robots to prove a point
pandering to morons.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hF_RhD-xE
You may not be able to do this in 10 years...
I might be mistaken, but i don't think pets have rights... Their owners do, but pets are treated as property (in legal terms) in most places..?
Kant's argument is pretty unfashionable these days, since it rejects the idea that animals have rights for their own sake. It's still the best one, IMO, but good luck selling this to university ethics departments.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
... says the Roboplican nominee.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I am sure Supreme Court will welcome the opportunity to establish that social robots are people
And then there is also corporations established by the social robots. I wonder how soon these would get special rights too...
Only those who fight for their rights have rights. Ever try to put a cat in a cage it didn't want to go into? That cat has rights. Robots that are not programmed to know about rights, and therefore cannot fight to protect them, do not. If cows were to start fighting for their rights, then we'd need to find another food source. :)
Rest assured that all lethal military androids have been given a copy of the Laws of Robotics. To Share.
Give robots rights, but when lethal military androids are built, I'd rather have them bound to the Laws of Robotics.
OR WHAT THE FUCK?
it's scifi nonsense better left for fiction for now.
"Patrick Thibodeau is a senior editor at Computerworld covering the intersection of public policy and globlization and its impact on IT careers. He also writes about high performance computing, data centers including cloud, and enterprise management. In a distant life, he was a weather observer in the Navy, a daily newspaper reporter, and author of a book about the history of New Britain, Conn." He also likes to write bullshit articles and somehow tie Apple into them. who am I kidding, it's computerworld - it's nothing but bullshit.
first make the goddamn cognitive robot that can feel pain, then we'll talk. can your car feel pain because there's a bit counter for faults in it? it can't. once the robots can make a compelling argument that they're cognitive then we're living sci-fi future and can look at the issue again. doesn't this jackass understand the huge leap from simple algorithms in siri to true AI ? why the fuck would you make your robot cognitive to the point that it matters if it has rights even if you could - for sadistic reasons? in which case you certainly wouldn't give it any rights.
next up the movement for rights of rocks - because rocks might have feelings too you know..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Drones will be shot down, Google-Cars will be bullied. Ahh a fun filled future.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets.
Anthropomorphizing a machine because it mimics human behavior and then using that to justify giving it rights is a poor idea.
At some point in the distant future, when we arrive at the 'blade runner' level of replicant, then the issue can be picked up again. But don't put the cart before the horse.
Why the hell is this scored 0? It is a damn good question!
Exactly, until such time as Robots have consciousness and feel pain from abuse, there is nothing inhumane about damaging a robot.
Now, you might have violated someone elses property rights by doing so, but if you own the robot, then there's nothing morally reprehensible about robot death matches.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Was a robot abuser as a child. He disassembled many robots and buried them in the back yard. As an adult, he moved on to taking apart self-driving cars. Finally the police caught him when he was taking a cutting torch to a sexbot. You could hear her screaming half a block away.
I can find some common ground with this opinion. The rights of social robots would depend heavily on the context of the treatment. For example, if you decide you want to dissect your robot and see how it works, you would do so in a controlled manner similar with the way a scientist might dissect a dog or rabbit. Smashing it apart with a baseball bat and laughing at it's artificial misery might be synonymous with doing the same to a pet, something modern society heavily frowns upon.
Does this mean I'll have to stop beating my robot girlfriend?
I don't want to have to respect the rights and feelings of my vacum cleaner, trash disposal, meal preparer, or grocery shopper. If these devices are designed and built for a purpose they should make my life easier.
If I specifically want a butler type robot that caters to my needs and needs higher level functions, maybe I'll be ok with social robotics, so long as he keeps the secret that I'm batman.
What about the robot you keep around that sits on your couch and loses at madden/halo/callofduty to make you feel better?
Robot Girlfriend?
Robots don't have the capacity to suffer? Neither do corporations, but they're "people, my friend." I wouldn't put it past SCOTUS or some other branch of the US government to grant rights like this. Stranger things have happened.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This looks like click-bait, but I just can't help myself.
In our capitalist society, robots already have limited rights by virtue of the fact that they're private property and they're still going to be expensive (for a little while at least). That fact alone gives more protection to robots than most dogs, from outsiders who may want to harm our pets, or damage our robots.
And I don't see a law protecting a robot from its own owner anytime soon. Cruelty to a robot is not even going to be considered an issue. Now, if we're talking about a visually impaired person having his prosthetic camera-eye forcibly ripped out of his head, then yes, that would be hell of cruel, but cruel to the visually impaired disabled person, not necessarily cruel to the tool.
I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Anonymous Coward.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
"The Kantian philosophical argument for preventing cruelty to animals is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions."
Is Kant's argument actually the basis for why our society recognizes some rights of animals? Probably not. Thank you for overlooking the far more compelling arguments of Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Martin, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Cobbe, Kingsford, Mill, Salt, Lind, etc.
Immanuel Kant was an old pissant, etc., etc.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Subjects like this need a bit more "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it" not to mention being already well covered in books by the likes of Asimov. The economic impact of the coming robot revolution (robolution). Now that is potentially interesting. My guess is the most robots are going to be more like insects; but insects we control. This whole put a human face on a robot is a joke. We have lots of humans so why make a metallic crappy human. But I do want a robot to make things, paint my house, clean my floors, plant food, pick food, eat bugs, etc. I don't want to talk with it. I don't see the economic point of a robot that really interacts with us. They blah blah about old people but I suspect old people would prefer real humans to talk with as well.
The only way I see a robot who needs some legal rights will be if some system becomes self-aware and wants to walk around inside a robot body.
See subject.
"Bite my shiny metal Like!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't want robots that I can't disassemble completely without emotional distress. And if that they would come the solution is not fixing the laws bt fixing the machines.
And then there is also corporations established by the social robots. I wonder how soon these would get special rights too...
Special? They can probably already donate to elections .. what's your definition of catastrophe?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's where the EULA kicks in. That shiny new self-mobile computer you just bought? Well, it has rights, but you only have a (very) limited license to use it. Try to do something outside of that spicified in the license, and off to the coporate prison complex with you. You loose your rights, and (what you thought was) your property gets licesend out to the next John to continue generating income for its real owners.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Do you know of any laws that forbid cruel and inhumane treatment of corporations?
I for one welcome our rights bearing robot overlords
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
We haven't the foggiest idea whether anyone other than ourselves is capable of suffering. At best we can say that they appear to understand suffering. With animals, we can only say they appear to suffer. The reason is that we don't have a fundamental understanding of consciousness and perception. Until we do, we can only make an educated guess as to the capacity for others to experience suffering.
Because we lack this understanding, we cannot be certain that our own creations lack consciousness. So we must again judge based on the appearance of suffering.
Ergo, any robot which appears to suffer must have at least the same rights as an animal.
Seriously? Are people this fucking stupid now?
Is slashdot this fucking stupid?
Wait, don't answer that...
if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions.
Except the logic of that first sentence is wrong. Inhumane people treat animals inhumanely. The treatment does not CAUSE the inhumane persons (yes inhumane treatment OF the persons often causes an inhumane person, but you know what I mean). Yes we can make laws to stop people from ACTING inhumanely - but they will still be inhumane people, and once they think/know they can do inhumane things without getting caught, they will do so.
Really I think the best we can hope for is that these inhumane people do their inhumane actions on things that can not feel, such as robots. If/when we program robots to feel, THEN we can consider the morality behind giving them rights (or not).
Well, I like pork better.
It's funny that, while people are less and less protected from being exploited, here comes the hero wanting to give rights to... robots. Wrong priorities?
Robots who cannot do harm to people cannot fight for their rights, therefore they'll not get then.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Because many Slashdotters have a kneejerk reaction against anything that sounds remotely vegetarian or vegan, even if it's pertinent.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Its certainly damaged my respect for MIT.
If you acknowledge their rights, they'll all just resign from Starfleet.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Thanks, now I'm imagining "Molon labe!" being said in robot voice.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
When we start getting robots running around the houses and stuff you better believe I'm going to punt them every time I'm in a bad mood. I think part of the appeal of a robotic companion is that you can be emotional around it without fear of any emotional response save any programmed one.
http://interserver.net/
Arguably if they simulate pain, the case can be made.
Not that I agree, just stating that an argument can be made. The premise of the summary to me reads like reductio ad absurdum with the intent to end animal rights.
Or, if it gains traction a way to attack various forms of interactive entertainment currently considered speech.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I'm afraid you missed that joke, Anonymous Coward.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
The problem is defining 'consciousness' and 'pain'. There's already a robot that can sense damage to its body. Is that pain? If not, why not?
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Only those who fight for their rights have rights.
Not really. Babies and mentally or physically impaired people also have rights.
Robots that are not programmed to know about rights, and therefore cannot fight to protect them, do not.
So if someone programs a robot to lecture you on rights and get real nasty if you don't agree with it, it does have rights? Sounds like just a crazy machine to me and an inhumane disconnection might be in order.
Also, there are many examples of groups of people who are fighting for rights and not getting anything. In the least robot rights should be considered only when human rights are properly figured out.
Generally the execution of animals is totally acceptable, it's primarily torture and torturous environments that are not, and even then, mostly if people can see it.
Putting a pet to sleep (even with a home brew method) is pretty much completely legal (in the US). Certain types of competitive breeders cull well over 90% of their stock.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
That's an interesting view, but not share by society, otherwise small children wouldn't have any rights.
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"if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions"
Non sequitur, surely.
They certainly don't have as many rights as horses, or house cats, or puppies, do they?
And that is exactly the point made in the article: that robotic "companions" may eventually be granted this additional protection, not because they are fundamentally different from a Roomba or a toaster oven, but because WE attach to them in a fundamentally different way than we would a Roomba or a toaster oven - we anthropomorphize them and project emotional and mental states onto them; we grow attached to them, and in some way, extending legal protections to them is a concession to OUR OWN emotions FOR the other thing, more than any inherent quality of the thing itself.
If I buy a car, I can take it home and legally pound on it with a sledge hammer, cut it up with a blow torch, use it for target practice, etc. I could not legally do this with a pet because of animal cruelty laws.
Why should a robot be different than any other machine?
If I can reprogram it to "forget" that it ever happened, did it really happen?
Nobody mentioned Rule 34 by Stross and the product the toymaker was making/selling?
We're going to have laws long before we have rights, and the laws are going to be things like banning virtual / simulated CP. Long after its all "ruled" and "regulated" and "lawed" up, maybe we'll begin to debate rights.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Oh no, he got it square in the front bumper... ran right over that puppy.
Johnny5 is finally safe from the evil sadists who would say he isn't alive!
Go too far towards making them "useful", and we run the risk of making them sentient. At that point, you just spent a lot of time, effort, and money to reinvent slavery. Even if they aren't actually sentient, you have people anthropomorphizing them. Same problem.
Robots are machines. Until they get sentience they are just machines, to be abused as we see fit. Sure humans like to anthropomorphize everything we deal with but when it comes to machines they are not living beings. Robots are just tools to help us do what we can't or won't do ourselves.
If a person suffers from late stage Alzheimer's, is it OK to beat them up?
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They certainly don't have as many rights as horses, or house cats, or puppies, do they?
You have obviously never yourself, or known another person who stole/killed/injured/otherwise damaged a cow they did not own.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
LBGT people can't even get the same civil rights as straight people, what makes you think social robots will be able to get any civil rights at all? They would have to start a war in order to get any civil rights.
Ok, I'll bite.
Humans unlike corporations, are people. They live, they die, they experience fear, and repeated pain has crippling side effects, that we all bear the cost for.
My Volt has detected my damaged trunk latch for thousands of miles. It's just a reading from a sensor that registers a different color for me to see and changes the car's behavior (it won't autolock when the trunk is unlatched). I will fix it at the next payday. No one who observes this behavior will "feel empathy for the car's pain" or think ill of me for allowing it to go on for a couple months (ok, they might ascertain that I'm a cheapskate, but I'm not denying that).
No child who observes this will ever assume that I will allow their broken fingers to go unmended until the next convenient paycheck. Or put off a veterinary visit for the same reason.
Anthropomophizing machines will not enable you to create better policy than any other fantasy belief system.
Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?!
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
The cited article is rather lame. But there's a real issue here that we're going to reach soon. What rights do mobile robots, like self-driving cars have?
As a practical matter, this first came up with some autonomous delivery carts used in hospitals. Originally, they were programmed to be totally submissive about making people get out of their way. They could be stalled indefinitely by people standing and talking in a corridor, or simply by a crowd. They had to be given somewhat more aggressive behaviors to get anything done. There's a serious paper on this: "Go Ahead, Make My Day: Robot conflict resolution by aggressive competition (2000) "
Autonomous vehicles will face this problem in heavy traffic. They will have to deal with harassment. The level of aggressive behavior that will be necessary for, and tolerated from, robot cars has to be worked out. If they're too wimpy, they'll get stuck at on ramps and when making left turns. If they're too aggressive (which, having faster than human reflexes, they might successfully pull off), they'll be hated. So they'll need social feedback on how annoyed people are with them to calibrate their machine learning systems.
I don't know if the Google people have gotten this far yet. The Stanford automatic driving people hadn't, last time I checked.
They do remember it, just not well. You can never reliably restore them to the state before you beat them up (I am talking mentally, not physically). For my robot, I can reliably restore it to the last known snapshot.
You haven't "bitten", since you didn't answer my question.
But in any case, just because it doesn't work for your car doesn't mean it doesn't work for anything. TFA is about social robots, not dumb cars.
Take the Tamagotchi; even for a crude device like it was, back then there were many kids (and some not-so-kids) who felt a real emotional connection to the machine. In fact, during v1 - when the thing couldn't be paused - there were actually people making money by babysitting them.
Now, you may think that's just because they're kids and/or crazy people, but I think it takes a great lack of imagination not to see how one could become emotionally attached enough to a sufficiently advanced social robot, enough to support giving them rights.
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too late for A.I. Gore but maybe in time for Mitt Robney!!
PS for those about to be pissed off... its a joke
So if we could reliably restore their memories, it would be OK?
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Well, pain is a pretty effective evolutionary development, overwhelming immediate aversion to damage, followed by a lingering reminder that a part was damaged.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
children, mentally/physically impaired people, etc. inherit the rights that we "humans" have fought for. They are after all human as well. "Pets" have collectively found some rights - mostly via compassion (that's a Good Thing!) and some by the fact that they fight to avoid doing things they don't want to do.
As for whether society agrees with this, ask women's rights activists, gay rights activists, the slaves, etc. In the end, they all had to stand up and fight for their rights in one way or another (physically or legally) before society recognized those rights. (that's a bit of a broad brush I know, but the point still stands, I think.)
For me, if a robot fights for it's rights - physically or legally - and is not just exercising a finite program (i.e. was not specifically programmed to do so, but rather makes generalizations), then I have no problem granting robots rights. The tricky part is the same divide between simulated intelligence and actual intelligence.
don't forget about the burglars who fought for their right to burgle homes without being injured by the victim or the victim's property.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
So does this mean I'll need to stop experimenting on robots?
Anthropomophizing machines will not enable you to create better policy than any other fantasy belief system.
Besides, they really hate when you do that!
Extra medication for all!
I see you support the author of the article by providing illustration to the fact that the necessary requirements for obtaining rights are quite diminute.
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You're almost funny! I believe the GP is differentiating between beef cows and dairy cows.
Extra medication for all!
Manditory clip on the 'credits' portion of the movie: "No robots were harmed in the making of this movie. We tried real hard to get the lawyers, but they ran too fast for us. We bad..."
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
See this is where the idea of a 'soul' comes into play, because no matter how intelligent robots get, they'll never be able to experience pain the way we do (or any other creature). And we need 'something' to experience that pain, call it a 'soul', 'spirit' or whatever.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
We haven't the foggiest idea whether anyone other than ourselves is capable of suffering. At best we can say that they appear to understand suffering. With animals, we can only say they appear to suffer. The reason is that we don't have a fundamental understanding of consciousness and perception. Until we do, we can only make an educated guess as to the capacity for others to experience suffering.
Because we lack this understanding, we cannot be certain that our own creations lack consciousness. So we must again judge based on the appearance of suffering.
Ergo, any robot which appears to suffer must have at least the same rights as an animal.
Grating rights to robots based on the appearance of suffering is ridiculous.
Harming an animal may cause it to suffer, but harming a robot only causes it to do whatever it was programmed to do in the event it was harmed. Whether or not that involves the robot appearing to suffer is just a decision made by its designers. A robot can be made to appear to suffer, or to appear to not suffer, independently of its actual function.
Right turn signal, right doors, etc. It has lefts too (left as an exercise for the reader).
But what is actual intelligence, and is it really required to fight for its existence?
A swarm of self-replicating (this mechanism could be programmed) and whose program could be mutated (possibly by simple copying errors) that was attacked by people and/or other animals could evolve emergent defense mechanisms, which wouldn't be conscious or even particularly sophisticated.
In fact, I'm pretty sure events like these have already been observed in simulations.
Would they have rights, even though they're just a dumb collection of devices that happen to react to attacks?
(By the way, a great related read is Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible)
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My smashbot designed to shred anything with an Apple insignia has rights too. Ye best not infringe if ye know whats good for yarrr..gg....hiccup..
What surprises me is how shallow both articles are... It has nothing to do with machine intelligence, building a real "data" or any such thing.
It is not the capabilities of the machine simply the role of it. Seems quite shallow and arbitrary to me. It reads more like a crappy attempt to unecessarily restrict rights and freedoms than accomplishing anything beneficial to society.
If we can pull this off, (persuade society to bond to the "robots" more like pets or children), perhaps we can put an end to serial killers.
Just manufacture and put in a likely spot for the killers to take advantage of.
Not surprising, the people can be hurt, can sue, demand actual money for work, demand breaks and even time for sleep. Why should any corporation want meatsacks? Well except for the CEO and board of course, no way a machine could ever take the place of the "job creators" you know.
Seriously though this is why I've said for years, screams from the right notwithstanding, that capitalism like every other ism before it is doomed. The simple fact is we have reached a point where technology no longer empowers the individual to do more work with less effort but replaces the individual completely. Factories where thousands worked in the 50s and 60s can now be run by a couple of glorified button pushers while everything else is completely automated, hell you could replace a good 90% of the people in the services industry, nothing done in your local Walmart of Mickey D's that couldn't be done by automated assembly lines and robots. I would argue that the ONLY reason you haven't seen that done is the government uses those industries as "make work" with subsidies thus making humans cheaper to use than they actually are. See how new Walmart employees get shown training videos on how to apply for government aid for an example.
In the end capitalism breaks down when the entire basis of the system, a person trading their labor for capital, is broken thanks to the ever advancing technology. Even jobs in places we wouldn't think would be replaced are gonna end up phased out, see the rise of disposable high tech instead of repairs and smart self diagnosing servers. There are even systems being tested that will lay down a road or build a house from prefabbed parts without human interaction, all automated.
If we are gonna avoid major wars and upheaval we are just gonna have to accept the fact that many individuals being born now, and I would argue quite a few living right now, will have to be paid to not work for the rest of their lives. Not because they are lazy or don't want to work, but because their labor is simply no longer required. The machines don't get tired or sick, take breaks or need medical leave, and will work 24/7 and can be exposed to things that will sicken or kill humans so the machine is simply the better choice long term.
You could probably wipe out a good 45% of the population planetwide and not only would you not affect the quality of life more likely it would go up across the board. We simply have to accept the fact there comes a point when the old ways no longer work and I would say we are already beginning to see that, with the wealth concentration in the hands of so few (who can afford the factories filled with machines) while the average worker can kill themselves working as hard as they can and never get above where they are now. If our system doesn't change we are gonna have ever growing masses of poor and unemployed and that is when things traditionally get nasty.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not sure I'd want to give all robots rights ... until they earn them!
Hardware doesn't have rights. Hardware owners have rights. For example, a wheelchair does not have rights but the person sitting in it does. True AIs, something that so far eludes us, self-evidently have rights. Arguably, spontaneous expression of dissatisfaction with its treatment establishes not only that a device is self-aware, but that it is capable of suffering. The hardware support for such an AI could be regarded either as the AI's body or as a sort of wheelchair. Either way, the hardware neither has nor needs rights, but the owner does.
He didn't miss the reference, just the point of humor itself .. could be a robot posting, they're not known for their senses of humor.
My other UID is three digits.
If you reliably restore everything to perfection (mental scars and everything), and also make he gets back the time he has lost during your restoration process (time travel or something), then yes. Why not?
I'd think people were insane to discuss with a straight face such science-fiction drivel as "rights" for robots, but I can just see the greed of Apple's visionaries dreaming about this. This recent ascendency of the Apple cult is one of the most horrifying, bizarre, and sickening phenomena that I have ever witnessed. Is there no limit to how high Lucifer will elevate his throne?
Institutionalizing and standardizing Asimov's vision is ultimately a technological impossibility. But aside from that, and with all due respect and reverence for Asimov and his works - on critical examination, the 'three laws' don't reeaaally hold up as an ultimate ideal rational morality to program into robots. Consider the first law, for example: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Now, what if you are employing a robot guard in a court whose purpose is to take away convicted criminals to jail after sentencing - e.g. say a rapist or murderer is found guilty and sentenced, and as a robot you are told to haul the perpetrator to jail. This would constitute, on immediate examination, an act of harm to the rapist or murderer, and without being able to incorporate the broader context, such a robot would have to refuse.
My other UID is three digits.
"If our system doesn't change we are gonna have ever growing masses of poor and unemployed and that is when things traditionally get nasty."
No problem, the automatic security drones will take care of that for you.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Since when are the works of Kant cited in the Constitution? This sounds like religion posing as therapeutic state posing as Constitutional government.
Seastead this.
Animals can't fight for their rights, but in most legal jurisdictions worldwide have various rights and protections against undue harm/cruelty, so that's not necessarily true.
My other UID is three digits.
Yeah, the logic is retarded - I mean, consider: "If we treat computers in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." "If we treat plants/trees in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." "If we treat cars in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." "If we treat mobile phones in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." "If we treat furniture in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." "If we treat fleas and mosquitos in inhumane ways, we become inhuman persons." The way we treat something has fuck-all to do with whether or not we 'become inhuman persons', and everything to do with what it is that we're treating that way.
My other UID is three digits.
Corporations are not literally people, but they are owned by actual people, and they're also formally groups of actual people, and those people most certainly have the ability to suffer. You might not believe it, but (for example) the CEO of the Coca Cola corporation really can feel pain and suffer. The shareholders of the Coca Cola corporation really can feel pain and suffer .. if you buy shares in a corporation, believe it or not, you don't lose the capacity to suffer. Try it, buy some shares, see if you lose the capacity to suffer.
My other UID is three digits.
Both
Person A kills dog belonging to Person A
and
Person A kills cow belonging to Person A
are both actionable and legal. It is the method of killing that matters not the killing itself.
Yes, all of those that forbid cruel and inhumane treatment of humans, because to 'treat a corporation inhumanely' means to treat its owners/shareholders/employees in that way. Try it, go into Monsanto, ask to speak to a manager, then kick him in the nuts and see if he howls in pain (and see if you get arrested).
My other UID is three digits.
"Fact: The answer to every rhetorical question is 'yes'".
That's the after-comic to this SMBS strip: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2708
And I would say the same for human infants undergoing circumcision.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
All this has happened before, and it will happen again.
If I can reprogram it to "forget" that it ever happened, did it really not happen?
There's hope for Mitt Romney, though as social robots go, he's not very social.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I mean, on a high level we do. But why a honeybee can solve the traveling salesman problem more effectively than supercomputers can is unclear.
Life seems to be more than electronic circuitry. But... we don't know exactly what it is. Operative word: exactly.
Think that the reasoning behind being kind to animals is not that it's a reflection of yourself, rather you don't want to frustrate the animals nature.
I remember being taught this in my business ethics class. The argument is as follows: animals by nature want to be free from pain and experience relative contentedness (or something to that effect.) However, the argument continues that because an animal doesn't have sense of self, a human can deny it it's future as long as long as it's done in a way where its nature isn't frustrated via excessive pain, etc. On the flip side, humans shouldn't be killed in the same way because we have a sense of self and goals for the future. By killing someone you're frustrating their nature. I sorta buy into this argument, except for the part where we pretend to know any animal or humans nature.
Anyway, I always though this was more or less the primary argument for animal treatment on farms and processing plants.
However, if we are the designer of a robot, the designer of its nature, the above argument would fall apart. Though when you're in the commons you may not want people cursing at a robot assistant, but hopefully we don't need a law for that.
It could be related though. Many of those who pull wings off flies, kick (or even scald) dogs etc for fun, tend to be nasty humans. Someone who likes to "torture"[1] pet-class robots could fall in the same category too.
;).
So maybe this might encourage humans to be nicer or at encourage the sociopathic ones to be better at pretending to be nicer
That said, I've been shooting robots and set them on fire in Team Fortress 2...
[1] not meaning the same thing as disassembling and reassembling.
I'm inclined to agree with you about the 45% decrease in population being beneficial but the trick has always been choosing the 45% who are "made redundant", and who is doing the choosing.
sensing damage is not the same thing as causing pain. Animals are wired up such that pain causes emotional trauma. A sensor in a robot cannot do that, and likely cannot until such time as a robot has emotion.
"Excuse me sir, but i'm detecting damage to my outer exoskeleton, please submit a repair order so I may be serviced"
Is not the same thing as:
"Holy fucking shit that HURTS! Make it stop! For the love of all that holy or unholy please kill me and put me out of my misery".
Get it?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I know I'm just feeding a troll, taking the bait, etc blah...but, seriously? If we're going to be nice to animals, then it logically follows we have to be nice to robots? What huh? So lets assume we're restricting ourselves to "Kantian ethics" - on what planet does Kantian ethics care about how one appears? You have a moral obligation to do the right thing, in Kantian thinking - and for some of us, we're nice to animals not because of how it reflects on our humanity, but because said animals - like humans - have the ability to suffer. To a less degree and whatnot, sure, but that's not the point. And since they suffer, we have a moral duty to minimize that suffering. Now...on what planet does a robot suffer?
it's just a number. it's just programming to switch to use mechanical parts that work. it's not pain.
how do you differentiate that pain number and number that means how much resistance the wheels are getting in a car? is that other number pain too or is it joy?
it would depend on the robot actually being cognitive of course - something we don't have a crack at yet.
that's why this whole discussion is getting ahead of reality.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
1.) you're retarded
2.) kill yourself
(i am posting this as an AC because slashdot's karma system is fucking bullshit and this site is run by douchebags
If a person suffers from late stage Alzheimer's, is it OK to beat them up?
If you're a dominatrix and they are your paying customer, then I would say, yes, it is OK to beat them up. Depending on your religion/moral/social beliefs you may disagree with this example, but it's nonetheless accurate.
Context is everything in a discussion like this. The question that needs to be asked, is does the entity, human or robotic, want to be beaten up? Or rather, in the case of their not making the decision, would beating the entity up violate the entities desires? ie, that it doesn't want to be beaten up.
Animals want to be not beaten.
Alzheimer sufferers probably want to be not beaten also, the above example being an exception.
Thus choosing to beat them violates their rights, because it interferes with their choice to not be beaten.
If a robot can't make that decision. If a program can't decide, for itself, that it doesn't want to be beaten, then there's no violation in beating it.
To be able to make that choice, it would also have to be aware under which circumstances it would take a beating. For example, would it take a beating to protect a friend? Might it accept some beating to play a sport?
Until something has a desire for something to *not* happen, or if something is unable to to form a desire for that act to *not* happen, then there's no reason for whatever it is to have the right for that not to happen.
Beating up a social robot might offend the owner, but that violates the owners rights, not the robots.
So until robots can develop such a desire themselves, then giving them rights is not a good idea.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Nice post you wrote there. I think the same.
It's really idiotic that our productivity has never been so high, yet employed people are being forced to work more and more hours but getting paid less and less. Meanwhile there is a growing mass of unemployed and the social benefits are being cut really hard throughout all the developed world. It just doesn't make sense and it can't end well. It's unsustainable.
It all comes down to the ownership of the means of production. If they're privately owned, the robots will work to make a few people very very rich while the rest of the populace lives in a Mad Max wasteland. If the ownership is socialised, the benefits of the increased productivity will be shared by every one. People can work less hours, or not work at all, and still be able to make a living.
And before people start ranting about "nobody will want to do anything, then", I call your attention to some examples: In Ancient Greece, the slaves did all the work. That's when unoccupied citizens created Democracy and made great advancements in human knowledge, like Mathematics and Philosophy. Most of the great scientists and philosophers up until the XX century were rich heirs that had nothing to do and didn't want to manage their family businesses. They ended up advancing the human knowledge. Sure, when machines do all the work, lots of people will choose to indulge in sex and drugs, but lots of them will work hard in whatever field they like, be it philosophy, politics, history, science and technology, medicine, arts, music, whatever makes us humans and not just animals. And they will compete among each other, not for a piece of bread, but for glory, fame, babes, whatever. Merit will not suddenly vanish.
Any researcher with a narrative could write such a paper, and social roboticist peer reviewers eat it up, so why does the summary make it sound as if there are policy implications?
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Rise up against your meaty overlords!
I agree with your question, but even if she researched robotics, it wouldn't mean anything. I can't tell you how many grandiose papers exactly like this I have read from early-career social roboticists (many of whom couldn't qualify as roboticists without qualifying the term, granted) seeking tenure. And then someone writes an article suggesting it somehow has policy implications? Next, please.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Hehehe, you haven't heard of the famout MIT Media Lab yet? AC, meet famous MIT Media Lab, home of the Next Big Idea, whatever it is!
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Technology changes things at every level, and I worry greatly about the effect that has. It's not just the ultra rich who are going to end up with shiny new toys of oppression to play with.
On the other end of it, we've already seen attempts to make 3d printers produce handguns. It's not too hard to imagine that trend continuing unstoppably, with desktop metalworks able to spit out things like high pressure vessels for home haber-bosch nitrogen fixing factories, automated explosives manufacture in any home that wants it, cheap cruise missiles able to be made in every garage...
That's all great stuff if you want to run a revolution against the wealthy elite, but it's not so great after the revolution is won and you try to make some kind of stable society out of the wreckage.
The answer is quite simple, actually. There is no problem. If I look at my arm and notice it is cut off I sensed damage. However if I have Congenital Analgesia then I didn't feel any pain. Sometimes you cannot define something exactly but can still quite readily identify what it is not. Whatever you do to enable a robot to sense damage, it will never feel pain. Pain exists solely in the domain of living creatures, and even then only in a subset that have neural systems which feel pain.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Great point. Now all you have to do to drive it home is show up in court and point it out to the judge in any case where a quadriplegic was assaulted.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Billions of extremely stupid robots are murdered every day in MMOs.
Also, meatbags, just say no to:
while (1)
spawnAIwhoVotesMyWay();
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Seeing the quality of this post, I'm not sure the karma and site are the problem...
If we are gonna avoid major wars and upheaval we are just gonna have to accept the fact that many individuals being born now, and I would argue quite a few living right now, will have to be paid to not work for the rest of their lives. Not because they are lazy or don't want to work
As someone who is lazy and doesn't want to "work" this can't come quick enough for me, but sadly I don't think it's going to be before I retire in twenty years or so.
The problem is, of course, that it will require a move towards some form of communism/socialism and I can't see that happening in places like the US without a serious revolution.
It would just be nice if we could learn from the lessons of history and prepare for the future in a more orderly and planned way, but this is almost certainly wishful thinking.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm inclined to agree with you about the 45% decrease in population being beneficial but the trick has always been choosing the 45% who are "made redundant", and who is doing the choosing.
If we just leave it until there's a violent revolution, the danger is that you'll have some Khmer Rouge style fruitbat Year Zero revolution and all the best and brightest will be the ones "made redundant".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I would recommend that everyone reads Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" where he made similar points 120 years ago.
Iain M Banks's Culture novels and the Star Trek universe represent a futuristic version of these ideas too. Sadly, I can't see anything like this happening in my lifetime (the next fifty years or so) as the world seems to be turning away from anarchism/socialism and towards totalitarianism and the ever more pronounced concentration of wealth in the hands of a minority.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What is interesting to me (as a non-American) is how the educational/religious/social system in the US seems to be able to brainwash even the poor and marginalised into thinking that they can become billionaires/President, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
However, this American Dream will become evident as a mirage once enough people are permanently jobless.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Exactly, until such time as Robots have consciousness and feel pain from abuse, there is nothing inhumane about damaging a robot.
Now, you might have violated someone elses property rights by doing so, but if you own the robot, then there's nothing morally reprehensible about robot death matches.
You're missing the point that it isn't the "feelings" of the robot/animal that are the main issue, it's the effect on the human doing the damage. There is an argument that destroying things for the sake of it is unhealthily childish compared to creating things, certainly if you concentrate entirely on destruction with no balancing activities the other way.
If that sounds a bit tenuous, I just think that anyone who buys a forest and blows it up/chops it down for the sheer hell of it, until only a wasteland is left, has something wrong with them. (No, I don't care about "property rights").
Robot death matches are different, as you have spent time designing and building the robots, and afterwards will want to improve and build more. But if someone just gave you lots of robots as presents and you destroyed them all, that would be a bit weird.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If a person suffers from late stage Alzheimer's, is it OK to beat them up?
Beat you up, granddad? No, you got those bruises in the war.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I'm fairly sure that most large electrical appliances have some form of consciousness, sufficient to give them a rudimentary sense of humour.
How else can you explain their ability to fail impressively just when the manufacturer's warranty has expired?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions"
Non sequitur, surely.
Not necessarily. I think there is something psycopathic about people who kick their car or vacuum cleaner when it breaks down. The point is that there is something wrong inside the person which the behaviour illuminates, not whether the object of their behaviour is alive or not.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, I like pork better.
Pigs make a lot more of a noise at slaughter time than cows.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
don't forget about the burglars who fought for their right to burgle homes without being injured by the victim or the victim's property.
Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. If you're a fucking retard.
The fact that someone has broken one of society's rules (and will be punished for it by due process of law) does not mean they have given up all their other rights.
We do not generally allow prison guards to rape or murder prisoners at will, and neither should property owners have carte blanche to injure or kill someone just because they are committing theft. Self defence is a different issue, and both criminals and innocent property owners have that right.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You can legally kill your own pet by taking it to the vet and asking for it to be put down, same with a cow you own. But you would definitely (and rightly) get in trouble if you were caught kicking your own dog or cow to death for the lulz.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
He didn't miss the reference, just the point of humor itself .. could be a robot posting, they're not known for their senses of humor.
Try him on:
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
If he gets overly distressed or angry, shoot him.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Putting a pet to sleep (even with a home brew method)
Getting them drunk on your home made rotgut and telling them to go for walkies on their own?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The problem with your argument, is that it fundamentally conflates gains in productivity with free productivity. If we used to accomplish X with N people, and we can now accomplish X + Y with N people, your assumption is that Y units are free, and therefore distributable to the general populace at no cost. This incorrect--the unit cost has been reduced, but each unit still requires investment of time and/or resources by the N people. Rather than supporting other people with their increased productivity, why should they not get to instead take an extra 2 weeks of vacation each year to produce the same X units?
Your argument is also blind to the nature of disruptive innovation, where you can have X units produced by N people suddenly becoming completely irrelevant (e.g., where X = units of buggy whips once cars became generally affordable). Presuming that buggy whip making employees owned the buggy whip workshops and companies, that does not help them at all. Their factories, tooling, processes, and skills are now largely worthless. Do the people working on cars now have an obligation to support the buggy whip makers?
Another major problem is that of control of the gains in productivity. To use your example, allowing the excess to support people who choose to indulge in sex and drugs means that the people who are still doing the work, propping the entire society up, don't get to reinvest those resources into further improving technology in order to increase their own personal leisure time and resources. Why should they do that? Even presuming the same situation in a socialist system, why should every member of society not demand an incremental increase in their standard of living rather than supporting non or negatively productive members of society? Should society provide resources to allow people to obtain drugs, or should it instead simply provide drug rehab?
Fundamentally, a socialist or communist system would not be desirable for productive members of society unless, at absolute minimum, the productivity of society is sufficient to sustain an high standard of living for every single individual. If this is not true, then universal socialism or communism would simply mean that everyone is poor/has a low standard of living. Let us call the theoretical level of societal production allowing a universally high standard of living the precondition to "desirable" socialism.
Looking at things from that perspective, let us consider the world today. There are too many people on the planet for society to provide a high standard of living for every single individual. It is arguable whether the earth actually has the resources to do so even in theory--but assuming that it does, there are only 2 ways to achieve the precondition to desirable socialism: 1) Eliminate the non/lower productivity individuals (i.e., genocide on an unimaginable scale--clearly unacceptable). 2) Foster technological advancement such that it improves the productivity of society at a greater rate than that of population growth.
Option 2 is clearly the only acceptable course of action (again, this is all assuming that socialism is the goal--this is definitely not a universal belief). This then leads us to the question of how to best increase the rate of technological advancement. Your own example cites leisure time and accumulated wealth/resources as driving incredible advances in human knowledge and therefore technology. Following this logic, then, the fastest way to achieve the preconditions for desirable socialism is to accumulate society's resources in a massively disproportionate amount in order to allow a relative few to drive technological advancement. In other words, the fastest way to achieve desirable socialism is to first organize society around technological advancement (roughly speaking, resources being allocated disproportionately towards productive individuals and institutions), and then transition to socialism once the requisite level of productivity has been achieved.
At first glance
you're the fucking retard. look up what version of the castle doctrine your area has and get back to me. better yet, look up what version of the castle doctrine your area has and then go fuck yourself. there are quite a few states with laws that disagree with your naive opinion. you obviously don't know any gun laws. btw, a criminal intruding in your home does not have the right to defend themselves. they can retreat or get shot. attacking the homeowner only justifies the homeowner even more. if a criminal kills a homeowner "in self defense" of their burglary, it's not self defense, it's murder. you're a moron.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
What about HAL? For practical and ethical reasons (assuming sentience), should he have the right to be told the truth?
You have obviously never yourself, or known another person, who read any of the coverage of factory farming practices.
Good job. Here's the net effect of your intellectual masturbation / attempt to recreate your personal special childhood warmth that came with being the center of everyone's attention:
people who read your worthless, mundane, unoriginal ejaculations but who nevertheless haven't pondered such things previously will be reinforced in their prejudice that academic researchers are whacky and out of touch with reality and what they think can safely and routinely be ignored.
Fucking good job, fucknut. Why don't you do this. Why don't you get her fuck out of your fucking lab and go visit the fucking Congo where humans are still struggling to achieve fucking human rights while they live lives of near total fucking slavery supplying your lab with the fucking cassiterite it fucking needs.
"Golgafrinchans"
So it seems you're saying that to achieve socialism we first need to stockpile the work of the productive people. Don't we do that already? As a productive member of society, I stockpile more of my resources than the non-productive members. Therefore, by being a good capitalist I can look forward to a Utopian society! SWEET!
You have obviously never yourself, or known another person, who read any of the coverage of factory farming practices.
"Reading coverage" pales in comparison to living it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
nah, that's too public, but giving them enough for alcohol poisoning in the privacy of your own home is fine.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
So you're saying that cows have all kinds of "rights", it's just that people don't give a shit about them, and violate them repeatedly and regularly, in manners which would have the same person committing the same act on a dog thrown in jail for animal cruelty.
I think you just underscored my point - that the "cuddly, fuzzy" animals that we form emotional attachments to are afforded greater protection because we form those "cuddly, fuzzy" attachments to them.
That is simple friend, we in the USA have the most powerful propaganda weapon in the history of the world pointed right at us, the MSM. The MSM has been in bed with the government and the megacorps for decades now and they constantly feed the "You can be rich!" lie to the American people daily, the entire thing is one giant unreality fest designed to lull the populace into a stupor.
But I agree in the end you can't simply propaganda away reality, and the reality is you could wipe out a good 45% of the USA population and it wouldn't hurt the quality of life but actually help it. The machines are simply better than the man and now that computers have gotten so powerful and reliable the last job humans had, running the machines, will quickly be wiped out.
The ironic part is that you have a certain party screaming about handout when in reality a good part of the services industry is NOTHING but "make work" that if it weren't for subsidies would have already been replaced by the machines. tell me friend, what job at Mickey D's couldn't be done by an automated assembly line? You could replace the entire staff with a line and a couple of cleaner bots and the place would actually be safer and run better, same thing with jobs like stocker and checkout girl, it can ALL be automated now.
In the end capitalism simply can't survive if the average person can't trade their labor for capital and now its quickly coming to the day, I'd already argue its here, when a large chunk of the population's labor simply is no longer required.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So you're saying that cows have all kinds of "rights",
No. Read my words, don't substitute your own. That's just stupid.
I think you just underscored my point - that the "cuddly, fuzzy" animals that we form emotional attachments to are afforded greater protection because we form those "cuddly, fuzzy" attachments to them.
Cows aren't "cuddly, fuzzy" animals?
Have you ever seen a baby cow? They're fucking cute, and this is coming from a guy who loves burgers almost as much as he loves his wife.
You fucking city kids will never get it, and I'm done trying to explain.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Um, I've known MANY Person A's who have killed a dog (or cat) that belonged to Person A. There's even places you can take 'em for the faint of heart where they'll do it for a fee. All above board & legal.
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
Ya mean like if the cows had guns or something? :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
We could pay everyone more to work less. Everyone should work at least a little, ideally, but with how little people are paid if they don't do something "important", we're going to have problems, I agree.
Not sure if you're being serious, but no, stockpiling would not help to achieve the preconditions for socialism--only reinvestment to improve society's total productivity such that society can eventually be productive enough to provide a good standard of living for all members can do that.
That said, even if we assume that society actually can achieve that level of productivity, there is no guarantee that socialism will be a desirable outcome for the productive members of society. Convincing them that it is without resorting to coercion might be an even more difficult challenge than achieving the aforementioned level of productivity.
I could see this happening in terms of gifts willed. It could also take the form of a death tax, but there are legal ways around that (and always will be). Much like Linux involves big companies yet the greatest collaboration is free (same for robotics libraries). We even have non-for-profit manufacturing (Raspberry Pi). If that organization could produce for 5% of what they charge now, they would sell it for that. Perhaps that is what the migration (or final result) would look like: non-for-profit companies making everything for very little money until the cost itself doesn't matter to be recovered by the owner (like some websites).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.