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Ibsen's avatar

The real problem with human-like robots is not potential “injustice” to THEM, but a frightening slippery slope to what ill treatment of synthetic, non-suffering humanoids might reveal and actually do to US. Think, for example, of the sexual behavior that might prevail among some humans towards robots created to look like children. The moral problem is not the treatment of those robots; it’s the horrible consequences of eliminating the benefits of self-regulation relative to actual children. We need to wrestle with the idea of regulating human behavior on a secondary legal level: Not outlawing deviant behavior towards convincing humanoid machines because it’s bad for the machines, but outlawing that behavior because we can all agree it’s very likely to open a pandora’s box of horrors due to increased permissiveness and “normalization” of behaviors previously considered heinous.

But good luck with passing laws like that (“Hey, it’s not a REAL kid!”), and if we can’t pass laws like that, what will our future be like? Pretty damn dark.

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AJ Derxsen's avatar

"Should Robots Have Rights?"

The very notion is ridiculous.

They're machines.

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