What do we owe to intelligent robots?

• Published in: AI & society Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 209 - 223
• Main Author: Gordon, John-Stewart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.03.2020; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agents (artificial intelligence); Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science; Control; Decision making; Engineering Economics; Ethics; Logistics; Marketing; Mechatronics; Methodology of the Social Sciences; Morality; Open Forum; Organization; Performing Arts; Reasoning; Robotics; Robots; Moral agency; Moral status; Artificially intelligent robots; Machine rights; Moral rights; Full ethical agents
• ISSN: 0951-5666; 1435-5655
• DOI: 10.1007/s00146-018-0844-6

Great technological advances in such areas as computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics have brought the advent of artificially intelligent robots within our reach within the next century. Against this background, the interdisciplinary field of machine ethics is concerned with the vital issue of making robots “ethical” and examining the moral status of autonomous robots that are capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. The existence of such robots will deeply reshape our socio-political life. This paper focuses on whether such highly advanced yet artificially intelligent beings will deserve moral protection (in the form of being granted moral rights) once they become capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. I argue that we are obligated to grant them moral rights once they have become full ethical agents, i.e., subjects of morality. I present four related arguments in support of this claim and thereafter examine four main objections to the idea of ascribing moral rights to artificial intelligent robots.