A lot of people have been sharing the image of robot trials undertaken at Boston Dynamics, often mashed up with scenes of Sarah Connor from Terminator. While what we’re witnessing are tests to see how robots cope with challenges, the time may come when we have to ask serious questions about the ethical treatment of them. In the Animatrix cartoons that offered prequels to The Matrix, we saw that it was human mistreatment of developing artificial intelligences which led to their fighting back against humans.
See my chapter on “Robots, Rights, and Religion” in Religion and Science Fiction for more on this topic.
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