Robot Ethics by Isabel Eva Bohrer (March 27, 2012)

Title:

The effect of robots in this age

First Impression:

My first impression on the ethics of robots is that with the variety of robots that can be created nowadays, robots practically replaces the human work force like the Kia car factory in Slovenia where robots are now assembling the cars.

Quote:

“The robots we have today are just migrating beyond being very simple machines and they have no intelligence, no smarts of their own.”

Reflection Proper:

For years the world is building new robots to help us in our lives, form the production line in a factory, to helping the military in their strategies, and even saving lives in an operation. With all of these robots among us, there arises many question as to who is responsible? What happens if something goes wrong? Or are there laws that prevent the abuse of humans to robots or vice versa? What happens when robots can start making decisions? Wendell Wallach categorize “robot ethics” into two parts. The first category is the use of robots in a social context. This entails that since we created the robots and the robots have no way of deciding their own, like a smart phone where we must give commands or actions for the phone to operate; it cannot operate on its own. This is why there are now laws yet for how humans should treat robots. The second category is where some independent robots are engage in ethical decision making like a human. The best example for this is the robot nannies where these robots engage in relationship where the robot are used for childcare. But still who are responsible for these robots? Wallach states that the people who created and deployed them are held responsible. Still the responsibility lies on us humans on how we use these robots in our daily lives. Wallach also concludes that there is still a very long time before we would be giving robots any kind of right.

5 Things That I've learned (List down 5 things that you've learned from the article)

1. There are no laws yet that help human responsible on how they treat robots.

2. Robots still has no rights.

3. The creators of the robots are the ones responsible when the robot does something wrong.

4. Robots are beginning to have decisions on their own.

5. Robots are created perform task that makes things easier.

5 Integrative Questions 

1. What do you think the government will do when robots can think by themselves?

2. Why do you think issues like these arises?

3. When do you think is the time when robots can think on their own?

4. Have you ever abused technology or robots?

5. Will you support the movement to let robots have their rights?