Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
But the question of punishment, both for a robot and for its owner, is
not that simple, as can be seen from conundrums presented by Lehman-
Wilzig. One question he raises is whether robots should be viewed as
dangerous animals—as they grow more intelligent the level of damage
they can inflict becomes greater, so perhaps the onus of responsibility
should shift to their owners or end-users, with the same principles ap-
plied as are employed when dealing with dangerous animals. Lehman-
Wilzig also considers whether robots should be viewed as our slaves and,
if so, whether the ancient Jewish or perhaps the ancient Roman laws of
slavery should be applicable, and/or the more recent American laws. In
some of these cases the hand of the robot (the slave) could be considered
as being the hand of the master, resulting in the slave's master (the ro-
bot's owner) being held liable. And how should we deal with questions
of diminished responsibility? Lehman-Wilzig distinguishes between the
mentally defective (in humans this means “permanent morons” while
in robots we presumably include those with poorly programmed rea-
soning), and the mentally diseased (for example, temporary insanity or
Alzheimer's in humans, or a faulty microprocessor or memory chip in a
robot). How should the difference between the two affect our views on
punishment for errant robots? And how should we punish them, and
their owners?
For robots, Lehman-Wilzig suggests both rehabilitation and restitu-
tion. The idea of reprogramming the culprit, thereby rehabilitating the
robot, which is echoed in the Floridi and Sanders suggestion of corrective
training, would be relatively easy to accomplish. As to restitution, this
is a relatively recent concept in the courts for humans and it might also
work for robots, depending on the magnitude of their crime. For less se-
vere offences the robot could perhaps be put to work for the benefit of its
human victim(s), though whether or not this would be of any genuine
value to the victims is a moot point—they will doubtless already have
theirownrobottodotheirbidding.
Persuasive Technology
Stanford University has inaugurated a laboratory devoted to the recently
founded science of persuasive technology, also called captology. This
topic is not the proper place to conduct a wide-ranging debate on the
ethics of persuasion but it is appropriate to discuss these ethics as they
relate to intelligent computer technology. With the ability to induce
