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Last Updated: Friday, 9 March 2007, 14:43 GMT

The ethical dilemmas of robotics

If the idea of robot ethics
sounds like something out
of science fiction, think
again, writes Dylan Evans.

Scientists are already

beginning to think seriously
about the new ethical
problems posed by current
developments in robotics.
In Pictures: Robot menagerie
This week, experts in South Korea said they were drawing up
an ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice
versa. And, a group of leading roboticists called the European
Robotics Network (Euron) has even started lobbying
governments for legislation.

At the top of their list of concerns is safety. Robots were once

confined to specialist applications in industry and the
military, where users received extensive training on their
use, but they are increasingly being used by ordinary people.

Robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers are already in

many homes, and robotic toys are increasingly popular with
children.

As these robots become more intelligent, it will become

harder to decide who is responsible if they injure someone. Is
the designer to blame, or the user, or the robot itself?

Decisions

Software robots - basically, just complicated computer

programmes - already make important financial decisions.
Whose fault is it if they make a bad investment?

Isaac Asimov was already

thinking about these problems
back in the 1940s, when he
developed his famous "three
laws of robotics".

He argued that intelligent

robots should all be
programmed to obey the
following three laws:

• A robot may not injure

a human being, or,
through inaction, allow
a human being to come
to harm
• A robot must obey the
orders given it by
human beings except Robots have become a lot more intelligent over
where such orders the decades

would conflict with the First Law

• A robot must protect its own existence as long as
such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law
These three laws might seem like a good way to keep robots
from harming people. But to a roboticist they pose more
problems than they solve. In fact, programming a real robot
to follow the three laws would itself be very difficult.

For a start, the robot would need to be able to tell humans

apart from similar-looking things such as chimpanzees,
statues and humanoid robots.

This may be easy for us humans, but it is a very hard

problem for robots, as anyone working in machine vision will
tell you.

Robot 'rights'

Similar problems arise with rule two, as the robot would have
to be capable of telling an order apart from a casual request,
which would involve more research in the field of natural
language processing.

Asimov's three laws only

address the problem of
making robots safe, so even if
we could find a way to
program robots to follow
them, other problems could
arise if robots became
sentient.

If robots can feel pain, should Nasa's Robotnaut is designed to work on Mars
they be granted certain rights? If robots develop emotions,
as some experts think they will, should they be allowed to
marry humans? Should they be allowed to own property?

These questions might sound far-fetched, but debates over

animal rights would have seemed equally far-fetched to
many people just a few decades ago. Now, however, such
questions are part of mainstream public debate.

And the technology is progressing so fast that it is probably

wise to start addressing the issues now.

One area of robotics that raises some difficult ethical

questions, and which is already developing rapidly, is the
field of emotional robotics.

This is the attempt to endow More pressing moral questions are

robots with the ability to already being raised by the increasing use
recognise human expressions of robots in the military
of emotion, and to engage in behaviour that humans readily
perceive as emotional. Humanoid heads with expressive
features have become alarmingly lifelike.

David Hanson, an American scientist who once worked for

Disney, has developed a novel form of artificial skin that
bunches and wrinkles just like human skin, and the robot
heads he covers in this can smile, frown, and grimace in very
human-like ways.

These robots are specifically designed to encourage human

beings to form emotional attachments to them. From a
commercial point of view, this is a perfectly legitimate way of
increasing sales. But the ethics of robot-human interaction
are more murky.
Jaron Lanier, an internet
pioneer, has warned of the
dangers such technology
poses to our sense of our own
humanity. If we see machines
as increasingly human-like,
will we come to see ourselves
as more machine-like?

Lanier talks of the dangers of David Hanson's K bot can mimic human
"widening the moral circle" too expressions
much.

If we grant rights to more and more entities besides

ourselves, will we dilute our sense of our own specialness?

This kind of speculation may miss the point, however. More

pressing moral questions are already being raised by the
increasing use of robots in the military.

The US military plans to have a fifth of its combat units fully

automated by the year 2020. Asimov's laws don't apply to
machines which are designed to harm people. When an army
can strike at an enemy with no risk to lives on its own side, it
may be less scrupulous in using force.

If we are to provide intelligent answers to the moral and

legal questions raised by the developments in robotics,
lawyers and ethicists will have to work closely alongside the
engineers and scientists developing the technology. And that,
of course, will be a challenge in itself.

Dylan Evans is an independent scientist and writer

Add your comments on this story, using the form

below.

This is a very intersting subject, it is true that if we progress

to a stage where we can't tell the differance (if any) between
a Human and a Humanoid then we will reach a point where
human life will be seen as cheap and we will lose any sense
of self-importance. We will eventually reach a stage where
humanoids are seen as more important than to general
industry than humans, that's when the real problem occurs.
Alex Campanella, Guernsey, Channel Islands

Instead of worrying ourselves about the hypothetical rights of

future groups of machines that may or may not be taken
advantage of and oppressed, it might behove those of us that
are interested in equality and fairness to begin with groups
that exist today that have suffered from hundreds of years of
oppression; namely women, Gays and Lesbians, people of
color, workers, Jews and Muslims etc. Possibly once these
groups have attained a modicum of equality and respect,
then we might decide to tackle these same issues with non-
humans such as animals and robots. But let us please keep
our priorities straight.
Blake Wilkinson, Madrid, Spain

I agree with forming a well written limit in adding capabilities

to a human like robots. This may, ultimately end up in
harming the human beings. Being an Artificial Intelligent
based system, robots will be able to create new rules infering
from the existing rules. No human being can predict the rule
which an AI based robot will create after a certain period of
time. So it is always better to take prevention if curing is
more painful or impossible.
sanoop, Bangalore, india

Although its probably a premature discussion today, widening

the circle of what it is to be human will demote the
"specialness" of being human as Lanier mentions, but maybe
that is no bad thing. This demotion has has been going on for
several hundred years as humans have gradually realised
that they are nothing more than intelligent animals made of
the same atoms as everything else. Living in a world, were
we once thought was the center of the universe but as we
now know, reside on a planet around an average sun in an
average galaxy, one of billions. I think humanity will be
better species when we realize that we are not as special as
we once thought.
Peter Langboard, Bristol

Asimov did not so much propose the robotic laws, he put

them in a story taking place in a future setting. He put them
in as a plausible system in a plausible setting. He often
laughed at thought that some considered him "the father of
robotics" for a few lines in a science fiction story. He clearly
told others that he was an author, not a scientist. He gladly
yielded the world of science to those trained in it disciplines.
Yes, his "laws" set a high standard. Reading his works also
shows he could see some of the pitfalls and loopholes such
rules would form. We should be careful about ascribing
"humanness" to any form of machinery. Though they may
become increasingly sentient through artificial intelligence --
that does not make them human. It is kind of like
remembering the line between reality and what you see on
television or in the cinema.
Craig, Dallas, US

How close are we to the stage in "robotology" where the

robot can perform tasks they have not been programmed to
perform or tasks they have not been ordered to perform? If
we are not there, what, then, is the difference between a
robot and a man in a robot suit?
Johanne, Guildford, Surrey

Ridiculous! While the greater part of humanity is still

grappling with stone age mythological beliefs in gods,
heaven, hell etc. we now have a clique whom believe that we
have matured to the level where robots are to be given
human rights? How pathetic. We still need to look at the
rights of real living things such as other humans and OTHER
animals on our planet.
Albert Schultz, Stockholm, Sweden

Surely we should actually be looking closer at the moral

issues of developing robots to this extent at all. The whole
artical is about ethics and yet you refer to the US military
having plans of using robot forces to go to war. Surely a
robotic force blowing up and killing people raises a more
ethical arguement than how we treat what is effectively a
clever piece of software and some nuts and bolts. Should we
start debating rights for cars, microwaves and stereos? Nice
side track to real issues of the immorality of some of the
other money making issues going on in the world.
Barry Aldridge, Leicester, UK

This item is totally out of place in the current context of our

time, we need to get the rules right for all creatures in our
bubble called Earth - not just the interaction between robots
and people: Shame all creatures don't have an ethical code
to protect their rights - like - I am a gorilla and I live in the
jungle, humans must not harm the habitat of other creatures
and must ensure their actions do not directly or indirectly
lead to the abuse or decline of another species or habitat.
This of course will apply both ways and allow the judgement
of cases when gorillas decide to invade the cities and run
amok, start killing humans and destroying their habitat.
Chris Barron, Amsterdam Netherlands