Introducing: Robot Ethics

[Karel]

Yes, because I'm sure you're all anxious to know how to deal with the coming wave of realistic androids in the most ethical way possible:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas ... g_rob.html

[Rona87]

Thanks for the link, very good.....

[jolshefsky]

[sarcasm]Thankfully ignorance is thriving today.[/sarcasm]

We are not "close" to having machines that can make decisions for themselves. That's the crux of the philosophical argument.

It's funny how if you build a booby-trap with a shotgun and a string that shoots an intruder, you are at fault, but if you build a remote-controlled drone that has a gun and it kills someone, there's somehow a question of who made a mistake.

Both are robots qua computers in that both are systems designed to accept input, process it, and generate output. The only difference is the fancy drone is more complicated, and therefore outside the scope of what the lay person can understand. Yet an expert can tell you that both are equivalent – that in both cases a machine was built that performed exactly how it was designed. And as such, it should ethically be treated the same.

Alas, ignorance thrives.