Living with Robots

The Nature of Robots

“Social robotics” presents a moral problem. As humans create more “artificial social agents,” societies must confront the idea of machine empathy. As people interact with artificial agents, human behavior will matter as much as machine behavior. Increasingly, people will take part in an “experimental anthropology” of “inter-individual” human-machine interaction. Now, “synthetic ethics” offers an alternative to the human-versus-machine dichotomy and a morally beneficial cooperative evolution of human and robot. Originally, “robot” meant an artificial worker. The first robots –  “biosynthetic” beings as in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) – were indistinguishable from humans. Yet most real robots, such as drones, don’t resemble people or animals. Čapek’s robots kill their human masters. Fears of robot rebellion persist and fuel classics of popular culture, such as Isaac Asimov’s science fiction short story collection, I, Robot, featuring lethal cyborgs.

Robots’ advantages over human workers include tirelessness, focus, dependability, efficiency and economy. People ...