ROBOTS 'R US?
Recent tech surges involving AI have provoked a flood of reactions to AI and robots as existential threats. In the process, discussions have turned to ethical issues in AI and robotics. I have written in a number of books and articles about these issues and I simply want to pose some questions here about the assumptions people make about humans when they compare them to robots. 1. Robots are machines, humans are not? Why shouldn't we be considered organic machines? 2. Humans have agency, robots do not? This usually implies free will, a soul, or some such feature that distinguishes humans from machines. Furthermore, this tends to go with the idea that we are distinguished by their individualism. Individualism is a myth. Humans are the most radically social of the (eu)social species, and their individual characteristics are functions of their travels through social networks. It is going to be easy to sustain the distinction between robots and humans as long as we can treat r