About five years ago, Japanese roboticists proposed the Atom project - a thirty-year plan to develop a learning humanoid robot with intelligence and sentience equivalent to that of a five-year old child (for background see this link). The proposal was compared in scale to the USA's Apollo project in the 1960s and it was envisioned that Atom would stimulate the economy and provide multiple spin-off developments in new technologies, just as the space programme had done.
At this stage, Atom remains just a proposal - although the Japanese government does fund many smaller-scale robot projects - but what if one day it does get approved? What do we want our robots to do? What do we want them to be? Much has happened since Isaac Asimov proposed his legendary three laws and as robotics constantly evolves, perhaps it's time to look anew at the issue of robot ethics. We need to look at what qualifies as intelligence, how we determine emotion and whether we want to give robots the ability to kill human beings, whether they will need protection from our worst excesses.
A discussion like this can't help but reference the work of Isaac Asimov (as well as Lyuben Dilov and Nikola Kesarovski), so with that in mind what guidelines are needed for the next generation of robots - and the humans that make them?
1: A robot should represent the best in human nature - exemplifying compassion, self-sacrifice and empathy through roles as carers, therapists, explorers, co-workers, companions, teachers or entertainers.
2: A robot must protect human and animal life.
3: A robot must protect its own life, unless laws one and two require otherwise.
4: A robot need not obey instructions given by a human being if such instructions conflict with laws one, two or three.
5: A robot must be committed to its designated tasks, unless this commitment conflicts with laws one, two or three.
6: A robot may not be subject to abuse or degradation by human beings.
7: Sentient robots and androids have the right to recognition and protection as individuals under national and international laws.
8: If a robot has human form, it must know it is a robot and declare its status when asked.
...Discuss.
