Related Sections: Robots
U.K. scientist: robots deserve rights
Apparently Sir David King, the U.K. government's chief scientist, has been reading too much Philip K. Dick. He seems to think that within 50 years we'll need to give rights to robots, as they'll be sentient enough to need to follow laws and even pay taxes. Predicting that eventually robots will need to be given rights so they'll obey the law and pay their taxes, he seems to hold our robotic friends in pretty high regard.
Not to quibble with you Sir Dave, but as far as I can see robots are still pretty unimpressive when it comes to their sentience. Sure, people can make mannequins that talk, but we're really far from having anything even close to a sentient robot. I guess eventually this sort of thing will come into play, but it seems like anyone who expects robots to start protesting and paying taxes in their lifetimes have spent a little too much time living in a rich and detailed fantasy world.
By johnnyfish at 9:09 PM ON 12/20/06
Actually, in about 50 years, processors will have attained the equivalent power of human thought over 30 years ago, so the British dude is more probably correct.
By simak1971 at 3:15 PM ON 12/21/06
Johnnyfish has it right Adam. You need to be reading the works of Kurtzweil, James Hughes, Nick Bostrom, and Vernor Vinge and read up on Democratic Transhumanism, the world transhumanist association and the coming technological Singularity. Posthumans will have rights. That's a simple fact.
By sillystringer at 1:54 AM ON 12/22/06
And you, simak, need to read the works of John Horgan, who excellently laid out the issues standing in the way of actual artificial intelligence in The Undiscovered Mind. If it were as simple as just getting faster processors, you'd be right, but the problems with AI go much further than that. The fact is, we can't make machines that really think because we haven't the first clue how we think.
And Kurzweil is a joke. Have you seen Ramona on Kurzweilai.net? Laughable. I could do better on an Apple IIe.
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