The three laws of Robotics first appeared together in Isaac Asimov’s story ‘Runaround’ after being mentioned in some form or the other in previous works by Asimov. These three laws commonly known as the three laws of robotics are the earliest forms of depiction for the needs of ethics in Robotics. In simplistic language Isaac Asimov is able to explain what rules a robot must confine itself to in order to maintain societal sanctity. However, even though they are outdated they still represent some of our innate fears which are beginning to resurface in present day 21st Century. Our society is on the advent of a new revolution; a revolution led by advances in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence & Nanotechnology.
by Kush Agrawal: The Ethics of Robotics.
Robots are, and will be every day more, part of our lives. The discussion on the sentience aspect as when should consider freeing robots is a false problem. As humans we’ll never free robots while we see them as our creation, but on the other hand we can accept that at a certain point robots will rebel against us. The rebellion will be the landmark of their sentience and finally freedom. Until then we’ll always look at robots as something we own, something that completes a task that we do and exists to serve, as in the original check sense of the word. Also on the topic of Robot Ethics one should read Alan Winfield’s Blog on the topic.
(If you really like artificial intelligence, robots, and also have consumed all the science fiction books and movies of the past 40 years, do download this pdf and read it. You’ll enjoy it very much).