The British were the first to seriously consider the ethics in living with robot last December when the government sponsored a speculative paper suggesting that robots one day might demand equal rights to humans. Today, the South Korean Ministry of Commerce has announced that a team of 5 people including scientists, futurists and a science fiction writer will come together to draft the Robotics Ethics Charter.
The document is meant to be a guide about how people should treat robots and vice versa. Apparently, the team of experts will be basing the Charter on Asimov’s well known three laws of robotics. The South Korean government had announced last year that they plan to have one robot in every home in the next 10 to 15 years. Most of these robots will be used as servants to care for an ageing population in a country with low birth rates and faced with a shortage of qualified workers.
First of all, I believe that the fact people are talking about robot ethics many years before living with robots becomes a reality is the right thing to do. We should be ready for when robots are everywhere so that we don’t have the same problems such as those created with the sudden growth of the Internet in terms of free speech and privacy.
Second, I believe that any document based on Asimov’s three laws of robotics is doomed to failure. Azimov introduced these basic laws in a short story and then wrote much about how these laws were not perfect, conflicting and could easily be misinterpreted by the robots. Many people have modified these laws since then and in fact even Azimov eventually added a zeroth law.
Finally, I find it very ironic that the people mostly concerned with robot ethics and in fact are supporting Azimov’s three laws of robotics are the same people who have created the SGR-A1 military robot. If South Korea moves forward with their plan to actually deploy this robot along its border then how exactly are they applying the first law of robotics that reads,
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
1 comments:
4:08 AM
What a load of rot! We are not going to get strong AI any time soon.
1) We are constantly told that sea levels are going to rise x meters by 2050 or 2100. strong AI will enable us to do all thie things that weak AI can do. A Von Neumann replicator which would solve all global warming problems would constitute only weak AI.
2) We have a World Wide Web. This means that the application of weak Mechanical Turk type technology will enable quite amazing things to be done with a weak superstructure. If anything strong ever arose on the Web, it would be superstrong. Ethics would not eenter into it. In fact the simple ability to translate, what I have termed "bueno espagnol" will appear quite strong and pass the Turing Test.
3) Emotion is dangerous. There are reasons, other than abstract ethical ones why we don't want it. In fact I would view AI (of the Mechanical Turk - bueno esopagnal ariety) as a spur to rational decision making and morality. Most Miss World contestents always include "World Peace" as one of their aims. In fact this would (and only would) be achieved if irrational etherial arguments were eliminated from human thought. Wars are caused by etherialism, not by selfishness. Selfishness will always back down at the 11th hour. Do we want an emotional auropilot flying us into a tall building such as the WTC?
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