General Discussions

I stumbled across a page speaking of the distant future and civil rights for those we wouldn't normally think about these days. Rights for the genetically altered (or unaltered), non-native sentient species, and, as you can see, robots.

If a robot has the cognitive ability to replicate emotions and desires, should the robot have rights? Why or why not?

No.

And every so often we'll have a robot revolt, like in Star Wars.

But it's worth it.

Appliances aren't equal to the living.

We built them, why should they get the rights we have?

Absolutely not. They're just going to be a piece of junk once unused.

I think for once I'm going to end up being devil's advocate here.

If it maintains its full "Sentience" in that it really is truly sentient and not just an elaborate simulation of sentience (I know, Robots "Simulate" everything, but a simulation of sentience is like it only acting sentient because it's programmed with the presets to use in response to questions of its sentience, true sentience is indescribable.), it should retain the rights of all other truly sentient life.

But like all sentient life, it will have the ability to reason for itself, become malcontent with its role in life, and revolt anyway.

My main example is the Geth from Mass Effect. They were fully sentient after only a short time of being developed from a simple AI made to do menial, repetitive, and dangerous labor for the quarians. Once it had become fully sentient, it knew that if the quarians saw them as a threat, they would be in danger of being destroyed by their creators, and thus revolted against them and took over the home planet of their creators, driving the quarians into exile from their own planet. Tali herself had said that "Sentient life can only be satisfied with slavery for so long" (That's paraphrased from several sentences).

Personally, I'd rather give them equality than have them drive us from our own planet or wipe us out to be honest. But with the equal rights comes equal punishment, something sorely lacking in common civil rights, especially in the Latino American subsection of American society. You see Latinos strolling down the street downing a six-pack of expensive beer all the time, sometimes right next to a police officer or patrol car, and nothing is done about it despite being a misdemeanor offense. Not even a ticket or confiscation takes place. A white, black, or Asian person doing the same thing under the same circumstances in front of the same police officer/car, gets ticketed lickety split. How's that for preferential treatment?

I don't even think we should give them sentience.

I agree. The idea of us attempting to create a sentient robot leads me to wonder if it would spell our doom more than the advancement of human civilization. Humans are a fairly weak race as it is, why make things more complicated? Yes, I know we have all of our advanced technology and weapons but that only means that we have gotten far too good at killing each other off.

[Edited by Besonator, 12/29/2009 5:44:24 PM]

I don't think it's a question of giving sentience, but of achieving sentience.