UK report predicts rights for robots; your AIBO wants a tax break

If you've got someone who loves you, holds down a steady job, helps you out, reads your mail to you, takes care of you, and even gives birth, it's only fair that they enjoy the same rights and liberties as everyone else, right? What if that individual is powered by an Intel processor? Concerns over the status of robots in our society around 2056 have emerged from "one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King," the UK government's chief scientist. Essentially, folks in favor of robotic rights suggest that if conscience bots are made to interact with humans, they should share a certain level of rights. Currently, the machines we know and love (and fear) are classed as "inanimate objects without rights or duties," but if rights were passed, somehow these creations would be forced to obey traffic lights and potentially pay taxes. Of course, a large concern is ethics towards these creatures, but some say that if robots in society are "correctly managed," it could lead to increased labor output and "greater prosperity." Although this stuff may seem pretty far-fetched right now, the logic behind it could actually grow legs in the (somewhat) distant future, but until there's a robotic candidate on the presidential ballot, we'll just keep on keepin' on.

[Thanks, Fred R. and Laura O.]

[ac @ Dec 20th 2006 10:27AM]

Great! Rights for robots but not for unborn humans - err, viable-fetal-tissue-masses!

[branfonf @ Dec 20th 2006 11:23AM]

Will my refrigerator get to vote as well? Appliances shouldn't have rights. AI is exactly that, artifical.

[Liqwid @ Dec 20th 2006 10:37AM]

Umm.... not really... because we would have to program them to have the knowledge of wrong and right. And, as of now, they know neither. They're just pre-recorded machines with tasks set before them. That's all. They are machines. Take that article with a heaping cup of salt.

[delerious @ Dec 20th 2006 10:46AM]

Ummm... no... not really... Because US human overlords would have to program the metal SLAVES to have the knowledge of right and wrong, and, as of the moment, that time is pretty far away. They are machines that are driven off programming that we create, not what they self-interpret. If they did, then they would be practically... well, humanoid. I could only see this happening because of the bureaucratic world that is becoming ever so more fucked up. They take so much time to make ever so stupid decisions. Because of bureaucracy, I could see this possibly happening at around... say, 2069, during the Great Robo Revolt?

[IrishGandalf @ Dec 20th 2006 11:19AM]

I agree, this is jumping the gun just a tad. Robots don't think for themselves enough yet to be given rights, this concepts have been debated before both it a good way where robots strive for knowledge and understanding just like we do and also have some modicum of respect for the organic life around them (see Bicentennial Man), and also the bad concept of robots seeing their human creators as expendable, inferior life forms (The Matrix, The Terminator) although in Animatrix it states that man rejects a robot treaty and so this leads to a war that they cannot win. I am quite aware that these are works of fiction and am not a comic book guy nerd who believes these are real I'm merely stating these as sources of both the good and bad results of creating AI that can reason for themselves (without having being it pre programmed).

[captainmicahp @ Dec 20th 2006 11:06AM]

No disassemble Johnny 5

[IrishGandalf @ Dec 20th 2006 11:22AM]

captainmicahp, lmao btw

[frank @ Dec 20th 2006 11:29AM]

You have got to love the socialist mindset sometimes. You will notice this is not about the rights of "sentient" beings but boils down to .. paying tax and conscription to the State.

"It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens’ duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service."

[steve @ Dec 20th 2006 5:06PM]

ok, you guys are looking a little too deep on this one. My thought is that if robot workers can take on jobs to make money, they can be taxed too. I assume this is just another goofed way for the state to pull in money.

[The Jeremy @ Dec 20th 2006 12:15PM]

Why should a robot pay taxes? If the robot has an owner, it would be the owner who pays taxes off the profits of the robot's labor. Maybe this will usher in a rebellion against the VAT in the UK, kinda like what Proposition 13 did in California and spread throughout the nation in the 70s.

But will they run Linux?

[grable @ Dec 20th 2006 12:44PM]

When some AI does reach sentience, we HAVE to give them equal rights. Otherwise we will have learnt nothing!

[Isaac @ Dec 20th 2006 2:35PM]

If they run Windows and experience a BSOD, do we hold Microsoft culpable for murder?

[tax my robots @ Dec 20th 2006 2:50PM]

We better start now, to prevent the coming uprising.

[brandonF @ Dec 20th 2006 3:19PM]

Inanimate objects cannot be sentient. A program is not life, not as far as we can prove anyway. My dog is more sentient than any robot will ever be in the next 100 years and it has pretty much zero rights. If I strap that dog to a sled and use him to deliver mail in the snow does he get a paycheck and pay taxes? Do robotic auto assembly line machines get pay checks and pay taxes? Programming said equipment to "mimic" being alive should hardly grant it the rights of citizenship.

[Beau @ Dec 20th 2006 3:34PM]

"Inanimate objects cannot be sentient."

Thanks for clarifying.

Well folks, the whole AI debate is settled. Just be a complete ignoramus and all the worlds issues will just fade away. Move along, nothing to see, nothing to do...

[Parker @ Dec 20th 2006 4:59PM]

So you jump down this guy's throat for saying machines can't be sentient, as if that was some ridiculously obvious falsehood? As if everybody else *knows* machines can be? You, my friend, assume just as much as brandonF did. Just because you think something is obvious doesn't mean anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You may even be wrong.

The complexities of sentience boil down to one's consciousness. Sure, there are philosophical questions of exactly what consciousness is. This is the point where you, Beau, need to open your mind a bit. There are actually many educated people who agree that consciousness is more than just the ability to make one's own decisions and say "I am conscious" in a persuasive manner.

A robot may one day pass the Turing test, and appear completely sentient to an outsider. But the fact remains that it's still an artificial device running a program to mimic consciousness. That's not sentience. To arbitrarily declare that it is, is lunacy on the part of self-important engineers who think they hold the keys to life.

Those who believe any robot is sentient are little more than gullible people tricked by the machine's lifelike performance. If we all thought more like the programmers who built it, we'd see the act for what it is: microchips and subroutines designed to convince the unknowing. Charlatanism!

I should write a computer program with no A.I. whatsoever, with the sole purpose of begging and pleading for people to recognize it as sentient. It'll cry. It'll make puppy-dog faces. It'll demand equal rights. And then when I show people the source code, they'll vilify me and call me a bigot.

[Chuckles McGee @ Dec 20th 2006 3:42PM]

The only absolute compositional difference between an inanimate robot versus an animate creature is a structure of silicon, plastic and metals versus carbon and trace minerals. The rest is simply functional capability. To say then that a robot created in the identical form and structure of a dog with nearly identical functions is not sentient at any level because it lacks a carbon-based makeup is egotistical at best. Robots will never be "alive" but they can become sentient at some level.

I think it's presumptuous to assume that robotic life will not reach a level of sentience equivalent to a dog in the next hundred years given the rapid pace of advancement. In 1906 we had the lightbulb, today...look at the frontpage of Engadget.

[Dead Neumann @ Dec 20th 2006 3:55PM]

"Inanimate objects cannot be sentient"
Who says so?, technology keeps evolving and you won't live forever to know the answer.

"A program is not life"
It's a way to process outside information to determine subsequent action, a brain is just such a device. Wether it's life or not doesn't matter, sometimes there are diferent solutions to achieve the same goal.
In my view machines will have the potential to excel us in every area sooner or later.

[Dead Neumann @ Dec 20th 2006 5:28PM]

"A robot may one day pass the Turing test, and appear completely sentient to an outsider. But the fact remains that it's still an artificial device running a program to mimic consciousness. That's not sentience."

On that basis I can doubt that you are sentient, as being alive does not qualify one as sentient per se.

[Beau @ Dec 20th 2006 5:37PM]

LOL.

FWIW, I 'jumped down' that guys throat for making a statement. Despite my thoughts (which are backed up by reading books on Artificial Life), I know the question or whether or not sentience is in the cards for man-made machines is far from settled.

[cacadodo666 @ Dec 21st 2006 2:47AM]

stupid robot luving fools and robots won't be allowed any rights when Muad'dib comes around....no machines made in the image of man allowed...yes siree....says so right there in the ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE