{"id":48257,"date":"2019-06-13T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T21:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=48257"},"modified":"2019-06-20T13:12:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T20:12:00","slug":"ethics-of-ai-how-should-we-treat-rational-sentient-robots-if-they-existed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/ethics-of-ai-how-should-we-treat-rational-sentient-robots-if-they-existed\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics of AI: how should we treat rational, sentient robots \u2013 if they existed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Imagine a world where humans co-existed with beings who, like us, had minds, thoughts,\u00a0feelings<\/a>, self-conscious awareness and the capacity to perform purposeful actions \u2013 but, unlike us, these beings had artificial mechanical bodies that could be switched on and off.<\/p>\n

That brave new world would throw up many issues as we came to terms with our robot counterparts as part and parcel of everyday life. How should we behave towards them? What moral duties would we have? What\u00a0moral rights<\/a>\u00a0would such non-human persons have? Would it be morally permissible to try to thwart their emergence? Or would we have a duty to promote and foster their existence?<\/p>\n

Intriguing ethical questions such as these are raised in Ian McEwan\u2019s recent novel,\u00a0Machines Like Me<\/a>, in which\u00a0Alan Turing<\/a>\u00a0lives a long successful life and explosively propels the development of\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0(AI) that leads to the creation of \u201ca manufactured human with plausible intelligence and looks, believable motion and shifts of expression\u201d.
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