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?
Devil's advocate? I beg to differ, you have spoken everything my mind wanted to. If humanity thinks you are wrong, then they lack modesty far more than I thought.
A garbage disposal robot for instance shouldn't retain rights, because the purpose of it's creation was collecting garbage, what else is it going to do? Join the circus?
When you give something sentience, no matter if it's organic, mechanic or something else, it's purpose is life, and you cannot dictate someone else's life be it flesh or not.
Well I voted no mainly because I think we should actively try and stop this from happening the first place, if machines do become sentient they sure aint going to sit back and allow themselves to be our slaves. I think if they do ever achieve any true self awareness we should just hope our new robot overlords will be merciful.
So basically your decision is based on one of the, if not the most used up scenarios in movies and books about robots. I don't know if you can stop the ever-developing robot science, nor the development of advanced robots, but you can try. The odds, of course, are against you.
Fear of the unknown, fear of darkness, fear of shadows.
A war between two forces can be started by these two words: preemptive strike. So basically our fear from robots taking over and destroying us, might lead to us oppressing and feeling hate towards these sentient robots and as we all know oppression and intolerance breed contempt and contempt, well that just a nifty lighter hanging on a small string called "Tolerance" above a fuel tank that we all call "War". All we need is a pair of scissors called "Reason" to cut the string and you got an explosion so big, that it'd make the 4th of July fireworks look like an engine spark compared to it. And as we all know, everyone has got their own "Reason" and uses them as they please.
Well I voted no mainly because I think we should actively try and stop this from happening the first place, if machines do become sentient they sure aint going to sit back and allow themselves to be our slaves. I think if they do ever achieve any true self awareness we should just hope our new robot overlords will be merciful.
So basically your decision is based on one of the, if not the most used up scenarios in movies and books about robots. I don't know if you can stop the ever-developing robot science, nor the development of advanced robots, but you can try. The odds, of course, are against you.
Fear of the unknown, fear of darkness, fear of shadows.
A war between two forces can be started by these two words: preemptive strike. So basically our fear from robots taking over and destroying us, might lead to us oppressing and feeling hate towards these sentient robots and as we all know oppression and intolerance breed contempt and contempt, well that just a nifty lighter hanging on a small string called "Tolerance" above a fuel tank that we all call "War". All we need is a pair of scissors called "Reason" to cut the string and you got an explosion so big, that it'd make the 4th of July fireworks look like an engine spark compared to it. And as we all know, everyone has got their own "Reason" and uses them as they please.
Hmm well I thought my comment was clearly tongue in cheek.. but you make a good point in that humans would most likely start any conflict between us and robots.
People fear what's different and the emergence of intelligent machines would be to much for some. There would obviously be the religious types who would oppose it claiming that we shouldn't be playing god and the media would hype them up as the new "threat" (in addition to the likes of terrorism, climate change, endless streams of deadly viruses..etc.)
The public don't tend to think rationally so facts would enviably get get distorted and before long people would demand the robots be destroyed before they can destroy us which would lead to said conflict. Hence why I voted no not because of their threat to us but rather vice versa
[Edited by Elite, 12/30/2009 7:11:52 AM]
I think it's one of the most used-up scifi scenarios because it's the only logical outcome.
How can you know? How many robot insurrections have you survived or experienced? Or better yet how many robot insurrections did the writers of those scenario survive or experience?
What do we know about robots... at all? Robotics is one of the youngest technologies of the last century, who can say what knowledge lies beyond our sight or mind. Do remember that we use only a small portion of our brain, how can we be sure we know everything about everything?
We suppose that just because they're sentient, yet so cold and logical they will automatically see humans as illogical beings and try to terminate them. What if these sentient robots didn't always feel like they had to follow logic? What if there were illogical robots just as there were illogical humans? Who knows where their evolution will lead them to? Maybe robots will want to feel exactly the same as humans... maybe they won't. It's all unknown.
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