Talk of rights and responsibilities, the reciprocal exchange at the heart of the social contract, is to be found in a new report commissioned by Westminster. It's not about young rebels or immigrants from faraway cultures, however: it's about robots.
One of nearly 250 papers sponsored by top British government scientist Sir Gaius Baltar David King, the dissertation on robot freedoms makes clear that if humans create sentient, conscious machines, we may have a duty to assign them the same freedoms (and laws) that we enjoy. So sayeth Sir David:
Imagine robots suing humans who assault them, receiving benefits when unemployed, or having to perform military service or other social duties, and you get the drift: to the authors, the logic of granting an artificial life form a genuine consciousness brings with it irrevocable consequences for society--consequences that, if "correctly managed," could lead to a far more prosperous world.
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