Robot Code of Ethics to Prevent Android Abuse and Protect
Humans.
The government of South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to
prevent human abuse of robots—and vice versa.
The so-called Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for robotics
users and manufacturers, as well as guidelines on ethical standards
to be programmed into robots, South Korea's Ministry of
Commerce, Industry and Energy announced last week.
"The move anticipates the day when robots, particularly intelligent
service robots, could become a part of daily life as greater
technological advancements are made", the ministry said in a
statement.
A five-member task force that includes futurists and a sciencefiction writer began work on the charter last November.
Gianmarco Veruggio of the School of Robotics in Genoa, Italy, is
recognized as a leading authority on roboethics. "Robotics is a new
science with a manifold of applications that can assist humans and
solve many, many problems", he said.
"However, as in every field of science and technology, sensitive
areas open up, and it is the specific responsibility of the scientists
who work in this field to face this new array of social and ethical
problems."
Abusing Robots
South Korea boasts one of the world's most high-tech societies.
The country's Ministry of Information and Communication is
working on plans to put a robot in every South Korean household
by 2020.
The new charter is part of an effort to establish ground rules for
human interaction with robots in the future. "Imagine if some
people treat androids as if the machines were their wives", Park
Hye-Young of the ministry's robot team told the AFP news agency.
(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-robot-ethics.html)