Status Updates From Robot Rights

The problem is that these questions are difficult to study. Imagine, for instance, trying to design an experiment that could pass standard IRB scrutiny, if the objective was to test whether raping robotic sex dolls would make one more likely to perform such acts in real life, be a cathartic release for individuals with a proclivity for sexual violence, or have no noticeable effect on behaviour.

- "Look, even thought you could give robots rights, wouldn't it be simplest if you just didn't do so and considered them as slaves?"

- "Well, you could do that. Though remember that, as Hegel pointed out, slavery harms the master as much as the slave. And historically, the practice of slavery has been intimately connected with racism. And on intimacy, do you really want robot sex slaves?"

- "Uh, well..."

A simple solution to the problem of robot rights would be to make it a requirement that the robots in question should clearly possess consciousness. But some damn philosophers insist on complicating things by asking whether we're quite sure we know what consciousness is. A couple even go so far as to wonder if it's not just the secular version of the soul.

Look guys, whose side are you on?

A robot is just a machine, and a machine is just a tool. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I will convert an "is" and another "is" into an "ought". Are you watching carefully... there is nothing up my sleeve...

DAVID HUME!

There you are, a robot ought not have rights.

What might be wrong with the above argument?

The organisation of the book is splendidly logical. The author separates the issue into two questions, S1 "Can robots have rights?" and S2 "Should robots have rights?" and then proceeds to investigate all four possible combinations. Having finished the introductory chapters, I'm now up to the first version, "Robots are not capable of having rights, thus the question of whether they should have them is moot".

Just arrived, thank you David and MIT Press!

❝Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics [...] constitute what is arguably a code of conduct for artificial slaves. “To the extent that the three laws are effective,” F. Patrick Hubbard (2011, 466) explains, “they function as a self-executing slave code for self-conscious robots: Do not harm masters; obey masters except where harm to a master would result; and protect your owner’s property interest in your wellbeing.”❞