UK report on robot rights

The Financial Times published an article today about a UK-based study which speaks out for the prospective rights of AI and robots in particular. It is striking that in this day and age, when certain 'hostile individuals' are stripped of their rights and are being deported to prison camps out of the regular jurdicial range, studies are funded which explore the possibility of the integration of highly developed AI into society.

Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, was already under criticism for endorsing the reliance of the UK on nuclear power, since it would conflict with his views on global warming I consciously refrain from using the word climate change, which is the intellectual property of Mr. Frank Luntz, a pollster who ran focus groups for several Republican races and also a poll for the Tories in 2005.

It is probably one of the human traits to rather engage in future desire than to focus on current problems at hand. However, it is interesting to read excerpts of the report and to imagine how exactly your tincan companion will have the right to vote, pay taxes and receive special healthcare.

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive look into the future.

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.

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

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“There will be people who can’t distinguish that so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable.”