Robotic ethics

BBC News reports on an ethical code for robots:

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007.

...

The new guidelines could reflect the three laws of robotics* put forward by author Isaac Asimov in his short story Runaround in 1942, she said.

Key considerations would include ensuring human control over robots, protecting data acquired by robots and preventing illegal use.

So far, so sensible. Asimov really was a visionary. But read on...

Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.

Now that's just silliness from the Artificial Intelligence brigade. They're just soulless, unconscious heaps of tin, for chrisakes! The robots, I mean. Let's not get lost in this hall of mirrors.

*Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (via Wikipedia):

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Seem to make pretty good sense, right? But then again, Asimov explored in "I, Robot" how these laws could lead a robot to harm an individual human in order to safeguard other people's safety. Robots are, after all, known for their lack of compassion or common sense...

Transparent machines

Robots are learning about emotional cues:

Making robots that interact with people emotionally is the goal of a European project led by British scientists.

Feelix Growing is a research project involving six countries, and 25 roboticists, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists.

Co-ordinator Dr Lola Canamero said the aim was to build robots that "learn from humans and respond in a socially and emotionally appropriate manner".

The 2.3m euros scheme will last for three years.

"The human emotional world is very complex but we respond to simple cues, things we don't notice or we don't pay attention to, such as how someone moves," said Dr Canamero, who is based at the University of Hertfordshire.

[continues...]

Given that machines are not conscious and do not have a soul (whatever the heck that is—I feel I know ; ), could we restate the key aim of this and indeed all technology projects as "making technology more transparent to human perceptions of identity"?

The machine has no awareness or volition, as we humans understand these attributes. It serves as a mirror and/or amplifying conduit (according to context) for our own awareness and volition.

And the more transparently and subtly the machine reflects and/or amplifies us humans, the better it can enhance, rather than alienate and crush, our humanity (which, like Shakespeare's notion of beauty, after all has no more strength than a flower).

Ironic, then, that in order to achieve such transparency, the machine must emulate human characteristics, encouraging us to project onto it the very consciousness and personality it can never have.

A hall of mirrors indeed.