UK Report: Robots Will Have Rights

Rule #1 for Robots: Must not injure humans. So, I guess this means robots will only be able to sue other robots. Heh

The next time you beat your keyboard in frustration, think of a day
where it may be able to sue you for assault. Within 50 years we might
even find ourselves standing next to the next generation of vacuum
cleaners in the voting booth.

Far from being extracts from the
extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give
sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans
is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to
be an extensive look into the future.

Visions
of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270
forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s
chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK
partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori,
the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots
they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik
Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent
Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.