There's a sudden upswing in international awareness that the pace of progress in robotics is rapidly propelling these fields into uncharted ethical realms.
Updating Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics, a new set of laws has been proposed to govern operations by killer robots. John S. Canning, an engineer at the US Naval Surface Warfare Center, proposes that robot warriors should be allowed to mix it up among themselves freely, autonomously deciding to blast enemy weapon systems, but permission from a human operator should be sought for targeting humans.
A new generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals is fast approaching the market -- bringing with it a new wave of concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply. The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support.
The government of South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to prevent human abuse of robots and vice versa. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for robotics users and manufacturers, as well as guidelines on ethical standards to be programmed into robots.
An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007.
Vernor Vinge and and Cory Doctorow discuss the technological singularity and conclude that a cooperative model linking computers, networks, and people makes the most sense.
Spacedebate.org -- a new effort to expand the debate on the weaponization of space through a collaborative wiki-like tool for structured debate on a topic -- launched recently. The project is modeled after Wikipedia, but instead of focusing on developing an encyclopedia it invites users to help edit and expand an 'argument tree' that reflects the various positions in the debate over U.S. military space policy. Users can browse the argument tree or an extensive database of resources, including links to relevant news articles, authoritative quotes, and a comprehensive bibliography of sources.
The US military plans to have a vast robot army in the near future but has yet to come up with a concrete method for ensuring that mindless devices can operate safely alongside brained troops.
With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people.
Japan is creating "robotic laws" along the lines envisioned by scientist Isaac Asimov in the Laws of Robotics he presented in a 1940 science fiction novel.