Robot – Some Ethical Issues

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Robot usage has replaced some of human’s work in this era. This will raise some ethical issues as follows:

1. As we are using robot to help and assist our work, or even replacing most of our work, some of people said that it has become something they called : “MACHINE SLAVERY”. It is unethical to use them for daylong just to become human’s slave, which do all the assignment and work that human told them.

2. The impact of the usage of robots for human society. Some company has use robots to replace their workers with some consideration. It is likely unethical to do this even because of the reason: Robots are more clever, sophisticated and obedient. And some low skilled labor will experience the side effects of having their jobs replaced by machines. They will get frustated for losing their job and they will think that they are no value worker as they has replaced by machine. This can give a really serious impact on societies when companies started to replace low skilled labor with machines. Imagine the big factory like SAMPOERNA, that normally employed thousand people to do the works, suddenly they replace all the workers with the machine. Many people will lose their job and raise another social problem.

3. How is a robot to be treated on a day to day basis? Is it ethical to turn your robot off? Or maybe it is more unethical to leave your robot turned on for too long. Some robots has an AI Program inside them, so they can think, act and give response as human being. Some of them even as if they have a “soul” and “feeling”. Considering with this issue it has become a dilemma on how we can treat on robot. Should we turn off the robot, which probably unethical for them? Or we just keep the robot always on?

4. Is it ethical to treat robots as machine? As Machines do not cry, show signs of distress, injury, nor do they act to avoid them. Is it wrong to smash a robot with a hammer? The machines of today and the very near future stand at the blurry boundary of simple machinery and the neurological functionality equivalent to insects, reptiles, birds and even some simple mammals. They are intended to operate and interact with us in the real world much as these natural creatures, yet with a set purpose in mind. The question is how long can we push off dealing with moral and ethical issues that relate to creating life like organisms.

5. Robotic Pets for Entertainment. These already exist, the most advanced for sale on the market currently being Sony’s AIBO ERS-7 robotic dog. This new AIBO version has facial recognition abilities. It takes 6 weeks to ‘train’ the machine to recognize the owner, and their likes and dislikes. It is possible to reward the robot through actions such as petting, and presumably punish it in similar ways.
But there is also a reset command. After spending weeks to train the robot, when we press this reset, it will back to its first state. Imagine this were a real animal. Is it ethical to reset its brain if such a thing were possible?




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