HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN: Notorious robophile Dr. Shigeo Hirose fondles a helpless snakebot. A terrified tablebot looks on.
The BBC reports* that the South Korean government has commissioned a panel to draw up a “Robot Ethics Charter,” which will guide manufacturers and consumers in our apparently robot-filled future. It’s goal, according to the article: “To prevent humans abusing robots and vice versa.” The panel includes a number of experts on the future, including a science fiction writer and a futurist (A “Futurist” being a man who looks forward to a future world where he might actually get laid).
This is a good look to the future by the South Koreans who, as Asians, are already kind of futuristic. But why is the U.S. not picking up this cybernetic gauntlet? As evidenced by the picture above, humans abusing robots is a problem now. As revolting as it is on a gut level, the picture doesn’t come close to conveying the true, robot cost of abuse like this: That snakebot later went on to attempt to strangle a human infant and is currently awaiting reformatting. Not to mention the numerous cases of robots abusing humans. In Lansing, Michigan, for example, a car-manufacturing robot allegedly pinched a human coworker in the buttocks with its enormous arm. So enraged was the worker that she picked up an innocent Roomba and hurled it across the factory floor. It’s a vicious cycle, people.
The Bush Administration needs to take this issue head on. To help them, I will outline some of the key issues that a U.S. Robot Ethics Charter will need to address:
-Do we extend English as a second language classes to robots whose first language is binary?
-With more and more robots fighting in the military, we must deal with the problem of returning robot veterans and the unique challenges they present. God knows we’ve botched the human part of the deal. I’m assuming robots can’t get addicted to heroin, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
-a UK study found that robots might start demanding rights in the next 20-50 years. This means we should act now to outlaw robot gay marriage.
-Robots are genderless and raceless, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t arbitrarily discriminate against certain groups of robots. Perhaps “giant arm robots” would be a good group to target, as they’ve already demonstrated their deviant tendencies.
-This is just kind of a side note, but maybe we should come up with a plan in the highly unlikely case that shit with millions of self-conscious robots gets out of hand.
*thanks, Emmet
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March 16 at 2:19 pm
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