TCS: Tech Central Station - Robot Rights

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Published 10/29/2003

Robots are people, too! Or at least they will be, someday.' That's the rallying cry of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, and it's beginning to become a genuine issue. We are, at present, a long way from being able to create artificial intelligence systems that are as good as human minds. But people are already beginning to talk about the subject (the U.S. Patent Office has already issued a -- rather dubious -- patent on ethical laws for artificial intelligences, and the International Bar Association even sponsored a mock trial on robot rights last month).
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