Korean Robot Ethics Charter

Several readers submitted links to a BBC article
about the South Korean Robot Ethics Charter which will be released later
this year. The Charter is an attempt by a panel of "experts" (futurists and
a science fiction author) to write a "set ethical
guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are
expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future". This
is a government project of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and
Engery. The
charter includes guidelines for the robots themselves but the main focus
seems to be on dealing with social
problems such as human abuse of robots, humans becoming addicted to
"robot interaction", using robots illegally and even humans who want to
marry their robots. Apparently the guidelines
will also require full human control over robots, which may not sit
well with other organizations such as the UK group that is worried about
assuring future intelligent robots are granted the same rights to
political autonomy as humans. See our previous story on the UK robot rights plan.
For more
on the Korean Robot Ethics Charter, see the KBS
Global story. Also, to put this story in perspective, keep in mind
that Korea is actively installing border robots that are capably of killing humans
autonomously, so maybe a few rules aren't a bad idea.



Source: http://www.netchain.com