Do Humanlike Machines Deserve Human Rights?

Because, when we don’t know who we are, we also don’t know what we aren’t:

This question is starting to get debated by robot designers and toymakers. With advanced robotics becoming cheaper and more commonplace, the challenge isn’t how we learn to accept robots—but whether we should care when they’re mistreated. And if we start caring about robot ethics, might we then go one insane step further and grant them rights?

First, the science: The brain is hardwired to assign humanlike qualities to anything that somewhat resembles us. A 2003 study found that 12-month-olds would check to see what a football-shaped item was “looking at,” even though the object lacked eyes. All the researcher had to do was move the item as if it were an animal and the infants would follow its “gaze.” Adults? Same reaction.

The perennial concern about the rise of robots has been how to keep them from, well, killing us. Isaac Asimov came down from the mountaintop with his Three Laws of Robotics (to summarize: Robots shouldn’t disobey or hurt humans or themselves). But what are the rules for the humans in this relationship? As technology develops animal-like sophistication, finding the thin metallic line between what’s safe to treat as an object and what’s not will be tricky. “It’s going to be a tougher and tougher argument to say that technology doesn’t deserve the same protection as animals,” says Clifford Nass , a Stanford professor who directs a program called the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab . “One could say life is special—whatever that means. And so, either we get tougher on technology abuse or it undermines laws about abuse of animals.”

It’s already being considered overseas. In 2007, a South Korean politician declared that his country would be the first to draw up legal guidelines on how to treat robots; the UK has also looked into the area (though nothing substantial has come of it anywhere). “As our products become more aware, there are things you probably shouldn’t do to them,” says John Sosoka, CTO of Ugobe , which makes the eerily lifelike robot dinosaur Pleo (also tortured on Web video). “The point isn’t whether it’s an issue for the creature. It’s what does it do to us.”

To see how far things have already gotten, consider this mission statement from the website of the above-mentioned company, Ugobe:

“Ugobe transforms the relationship humans have with technology by giving machines a soul. We are the first company to transform the relationship between humans and robots by blending emotions and personality with logic in machines.”

Huh. I didn’t know humans were in the soul-making business.