Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Graaf, Maartje M.A. de; Hindriks, Frank; Hindriks, Koen V.

doi:10.1145/3434074.3446911

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…In this work, it appears a younger age is associated with higher exposure to and more positive views on new technology in general, but we did not find such a trend. Finally, our findings overall are similar to those reported in our previous work ( De Graaf et al, 2021 ) which only analyzed the US sample. One noticeable difference is that in our current analysis, we found only three instead of four clusters which are correlated with the continents associated with the three samples we collected.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…To consider the opinion of lay persons in the policy debate, in line with the social-relational perspective to a robot's moral standing (Gunkel, 2012(Gunkel, , 2018Coeckelbergh, 2010Coeckelbergh, , 2021, we explored people's attitudes toward the issue of granting rights to robots in an online survey. A factor analysis has again identified two main dimensions for both reasons and rights, replicating our previous findings with the US-only sample (De Graaf et al, 2021). The reason dimensions consist, on the one hand, of mainly cognition reasons (e.g., moving around, language, attention, learning) with only two other at face value unrelated items (i.e, humanlike appearance and convenience) as reasons for granting robots rights, and affect-related compassion reasons (e.g, feelings, conscience, pain, moral considerations) on the other hand with only one at face value unrelated item (i.e., acting on one's own).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…In April 2020, we initially recruited 200 USA-based participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk ( De Graaf et al, 2021 ). In May 2021, we replicated our study by recruiting 172 EU-based participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk and 200 participants from Asia using Prolific.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Graaf¹,

Hindriks²,

Hindriks³

2022

Front. Robot. AI

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The robot rights debate has thus far proceeded without any reliable data concerning the public opinion about robots and the rights they should have. We have administered an online survey (n = 439) that investigates layman’s attitudes toward granting particular rights to robots. Furthermore, we have asked them the reasons for their willingness to grant them those rights. Finally, we have administered general perceptions of robots regarding appearance, capacities, and traits. Results show that rights can be divided in sociopolitical and robot dimensions. Reasons can be distinguished along cognition and compassion dimensions. People generally have a positive view about robot interaction capacities. We found that people are more willing to grant basic robot rights such as access to energy and the right to update to robots than sociopolitical rights such as voting rights and the right to own property. Attitudes toward granting rights to robots depend on the cognitive and affective capacities people believe robots possess or will possess in the future. Our results suggest that the robot rights debate stands to benefit greatly from a common understanding of the capacity potentials of future robots.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

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Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Graaf¹,

Hindriks²,

Hindriks³

2022

Front. Robot. AI

Self Cite

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“…Accepting the notion that it is possible for robots to possess rights says little about the content of such rights; this is another issue that requires further deliberation (cf. Graaf et al, 2021 ). Humans enjoy various types of rights, ranging from the right to privacy to the right to free expression and the right to holidays.…”

Section: Robots’ Right To Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Whether to Save a Robot or a Human: On the Ethical and Legal Limits of Protections for Robots

Mamak

2021

Front. Robot. AI

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Proponents of welcoming robots into the moral circle have presented various approaches to moral patiency under which determining the moral status of robots seems possible. However, even if we recognize robots as having moral standing, how should we situate them in the hierarchy of values? In particular, who should be sacrificed in a moral dilemma–a human or a robot? This paper answers this question with reference to the most popular approaches to moral patiency. However, the conclusions of a survey on moral patiency do not consider another important factor, namely the law. For now, the hierarchy of values is set by law, and we must take that law into consideration when making decisions. I demonstrate that current legal systems prioritize human beings and even force the active protection of humans. Recent studies have suggested that people would hesitate to sacrifice robots in order to save humans, yet doing so could be a crime. This hesitancy is associated with the anthropomorphization of robots, which are becoming more human-like. Robots’ increasing similarity to humans could therefore lead to the endangerment of humans and the criminal responsibility of others. I propose two recommendations in terms of robot design to ensure the supremacy of human life over that of humanoid robots.

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“…The AI and robot rights discussion has been mostly restricted to normative research. Few empirical studies have examined the public attitude towards these systems' moral standing (Lima et al, 2020;de Graaf et al, 2021). These studies have also not addressed specific perspectives advanced by previous normative work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Social-Relational Moral Standing of AI: An Empirical Study Using AI-Generated Art

et al. 2021

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The moral standing of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems has become a widely debated topic by normative research. This discussion, however, has primarily focused on those systems developed for social functions, e.g., social robots. Given the increasing interdependence of society with nonsocial machines, examining how existing normative claims could be extended to specific disrupted sectors, such as the art industry, has become imperative. Inspired by the proposals to ground machines’ moral status on social relations advanced by Gunkel and Coeckelbergh, this research presents online experiments (∑N = 448) that test whether and how interacting with AI-generated art affects the perceived moral standing of its creator, i.e., the AI-generative system. Our results indicate that assessing an AI system’s lack of mind could influence how people subsequently evaluate AI-generated art. We also find that the overvaluation of AI-generated images could negatively affect their creator’s perceived agency. Our experiments, however, did not suggest that interacting with AI-generated art has any significant effect on the perceived moral standing of the machine. These findings reveal that social-relational approaches to AI rights could be intertwined with property-based theses of moral standing. We shed light on how empirical studies can contribute to the AI and robot rights debate by revealing the public perception of this issue.

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Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Cited by 14 publications

References 46 publications

Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

Whether to Save a Robot or a Human: On the Ethical and Legal Limits of Protections for Robots

On the Social-Relational Moral Standing of AI: An Empirical Study Using AI-Generated Art

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