What are Robot Rights?
Robot rights is a somewhat speculative and futuristic emerging area of ethical and philosophical consideration, concerning whether or not legal or moral rights should ever be granted to robots or artificial intelligences. Though most robots today are relatively simple creations, such as the Roomba® vacuum cleaning robot, there are more advanced robots, such as Honda’s Asimo, which nevertheless fall short of being lifelike. However, this is unlikely to remain the case forever, as robots and their programming are getting increasingly sophisticated over time. It could be 20 years, or it could be 200 years, but humanity will eventually come face-to-face with lifelike, possibly conscious robots. The concept of robot rights is linked to the ethics and philosophy of artificial intelligence. Whether or not lifelike robots are created in the near future, the concept of robot rights is interesting both as a fictional device and an avenue of philosophical exploration. For instance, it causes us t
