Self-awareness, Robot Rights, and Today’s Robots

Last Friday, I was sitting in a seminar room reading up on an article that introduced me to a group called the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots (ASPCR). The message of the group and its position is very clear from the website. The front page of the website reads in large letters “Robots are people too! Or at least they will be someday” and “Upholding Robotic Rights Since 1999″.

I am very much open to such discussion of robot rights if and when such machines are developed. I think advocating for robot rights would become necessary if robots are sentient beings that are equal to humans.

However, if and before we are to get to that point, maybe we should be asking ‘why’ we would want such a machine in the first place?

Robohub: Your new go-to source for everything robot-related

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Hello everyone! I bring you some exciting news today.
Yesterday, a new website called Robohub shyly made its debut to the world for you to visit.
Robohub is a nonprofit initiative that aims to provide you with …

Can robots know the difference between right and wrong?

Whenever I introduce people to roboethics, people can’t help but ask me “Is robotics technology really advanced enough for us to even worry about ethical issues surrounding them?”.

I think this BBC report (forwarded to me via my labmate Tom Huryn) does a great job of connecting what’s out there already, and how roboethics is indeed a relevant topic of discussion today (rather than something sci-fi-esque for a distant future).

Geminoid Summit

According to IEEE Spectrum’s automation blog, three geminoids met in Japan at the ATR laboratory on March 30th. What are geminoids? They are telepresence robots that take the form of an android (human looking robot).
You can …

Roboethics 2010 Timeline

It’s mid-February 2011 already, and the year 2010 is well tucked away in the past.
But February is not too late for a post on 2010, I think.
I worked on this timeline of roboethics events 2010 …

Is robotics (and robotic surgery) just a big hype?

Is robotics all just a big hype? I would like to say yes, and no. This is a temporary recycle of an older post I wrote last December covering a topic I wanted to discuss at last night’s Cafe Scientifique. How is medical robotics affecting the society? A discussion of cost vs. benefits, how more people are choosing robotic surgeries, and how some are more disappointed afterwards.

the Andersons and the Ethical Robot

For those of you who don’t know the Andersons in the roboethics world, please meet them via the video here.

Susan Anderson and Michael Anderson are a philosopher and a computer scientist (yes, they’re a couple) …

Small Steps for Robots to Giant Leap for Robotkind?

I found a very good coverage on robots and issues involved with the current state of the art  technology.
PBS NewsHour’s correspondent Miles O’Brien reports:

The full transcript of the coverage is available here.

Man vs. Machine – A Bowling Match…

We, the homo-sapiens, constantly seek challenges and wow the world. Yuna Kim’s perfect figure skating performance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics  (2010) would be my favorite example of this, but then again, we met the challenge of …

The Empathic Civilisation and Roboethics

I am becoming quite fond of RSA animations, and they are becoming more of my idea tinkering entertainment sources during dinner. If any of the roboethicists out there are a fan of either TED videos …