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I'd like to draft a copy of the Robot Rights Law as part of a fan fiction. Any ideas? I'd think it would have to be based as an ammendment to the Japanese constitution since the Atom series was based in New Shinjuku.

Would this be drafted by Robots or humans? If by robots, you might want to refer not only to MLKs speaches and writings for ideas, but also other groups, that lacking political power, were appealing to the in-power group to give up their dominanation. This is a tough thing to do, being one who is attempting to bargain from a position of weakness. However, if the robot rely on physical strength to go against the humans' political strength, that may be another thing entirely.

1. numbers robots/human
2. strengths and weaknesses of r/h

Perhaps reading that book by R. Brooks before proceding might give some ideas.

I'd say it would have to be a colaberation between robots and humans.

Even to consider that such a law could be written, there would have had to be (geez, not sure my sentence makes sense... sorry! ) previously a lot of mutual understanding for that to happen. It would probably take more time for that to happen than the creation of an intelligent robot.

I would think that as consumer products, robots would initially be subject to laws intended to ensure human safety, just as any other products are. Then, once they are endowed with sufficient intelligence that they are capable of demanding emancipation, those laws would be under assult by their lawyers, assuming they could get any.

However, that presumes that not only are the robots intelligent, but also made to be capable of anything other than obedience to their owners' commands, & that is doubtful. An anime that addresses this is Najica Blitz Tactics (whose main attraction is fan service). A type of robot featured here is the Humerett, a biological artificial being, that presumably has no will of its own, and is obedient to its master. However, the humeretts eventually become capable of independent action. Lila, the Humerett assigned to be Najica's partner was at firt unable to do anything unless told exactly what to do. She would just stand idle unless given a command. Najica then told her the "think for herself," something that Lila could not understand. While she was eventually able to do so, she was a biological, rather than an electro-mechanical robot, and hence, was subject to developments unintended by her creators (evolution).

Regardless of the fact that scientisats and engineers might be hoping to develop such robots, I really do not think that any commercially made robot would be able to develop attribute that its designers did not tolerate.

Originally posted by Astro forever@Jan 20 2006, 05:30 AM
Even to consider that such a law could be written, there would have had to be (geez, not sure my sentence makes sense... sorry! ) previously a lot of mutual understanding for that to happen. It would probably take more time for that to happen than the creation of an intelligent robot.

Given the amount of time needed to write the Human Rights, only for Whites to acknowledge that Blacks were humans after all, the same thing between humans and robots would indeed be difficult at best
Some time ago, I had thought about some kind of "Life Forms Rights", involving humans, aliens and "computer life forms" such as robots would be. Even though I have an idea of what I would write, I have never writen a single word so far. The biggest issue is how a "life form" can be recognized: if we are to ackownledge rights to a life form, how can we tell the difference, for example, between a very well written program that simulate a personality and a real thinking machine? I had even gone as far as to wonder if there is really a difference :huh: The Turing test is yet to be realized

of course the whole thing revolves around the 3 Laws concept of Asimov

Originally posted by dannavy85@Jan 21 2006, 04:33 PM
of course the whole thing revolves around the 3 Laws concept of Asimov

I would have thought that the 3 laws of robotics have to be excluded, as in practice they make robots slaves of humans. Instead, the new laws of robotics, found in Roger McBride Allen's Calbian trilogy should be preferred in my opinion. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a text for these law, not in the Wikipedia, nor in the sum up of the story. I will have to dig into the books to find them, I will post them here as soon as I have found them.

Here are the new laws of robotics. I have them only in French, so I translated them, therefore they may be slightly inacurate.

1 A robot can't harm a human being.
2 A robot must cooperate with human beings, except if such a cooperation contradicts the first law.
3 A robot must protect its existence, if this protection doesn't contradict the first law.
4 A robot can act on its own, except if its actions contradict either the first law, the second law, or the third law.

Compare with the original ones:

1 A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2 A robot must obey the orders given to 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.