There are at least a couple things wrong with this picture.

Or perhaps I just have an over-fertile imagination?

At least a couple.

Reproducing robots...that would lead to robo-pr0n! Wonder what that would be like....!?!?!

Picture reminds me a bit of the policeman pair on Futurama.

Oh yeah...

I wonder if software glitches will be covered under the Robots with Disabilities Act of 2046.

If they are sentient, then of course they have rights.

Has the artificial intelligence community even come close to defining the parameters of sentience, let alone gotten anywhere near it with their projects? Nope.

Slow news day for the BBC, I guess.

If robots eventually integrate into society, pay taxes, and reproduce.. if they are not protected by law, they will protect themselves.. imagine a robot dump truck crashing into your living room because you drunkenly decided to throw a stone through its windshield.

Just like the Animatrix

Someone needs to tell these politicians that they won't be getting the robot vote any time soon and they can wait to start pandering to those masses for a few more decades.

This is ridiculous. Robots with rights??? They are a physical representation of a dream, an idea conceived by the mind of a man. His purpose? To serve human needs and interests. He's a collection of neural nets and heuristic algorithms. His responses dictated by an elaborate software program written by a man. This hardware built by a man.

WTF! This has to be the most insane piece of garbage I've ever heard. Health care, rehab clinics and affordable housing for hunks of plastic and metal. This is more than what some humans get.

The only legal rights robots have:

"You have the right to remain silent unless spoken to. If you choose to give up that right, anything you say can and will result in me disconnecting your speakers. You have the right to mow my lawn, do my laundry, unclog stopped up toilets, and any other task I deem to be beneath me. Should you waive that right, you have the right to be dismantled, melted down, and recycled into a cooler that will be used to keep my beverages frosty cold. Do you understand your rights? I don't care. Now go get me a beer."

If Robots pay taxes then there will be a whole lot of robots produced by the goverment to generate income! Yay, robot inflation.

Three laws are enough for any robot.

This is absolutely crazy, we have the chance to do something right for once, but instead of thinking outside of the box, these people are trying to impose ancient laws on this new technology...
It's not only intelligence but also free will what makes what we are, most of these robots are going to be private property, like owning a Computer, it'll be up to that owner to take care of his/her property anyway they want it..
Why would a taxpayer be responsible for paying for a CPU replacement on someone else's robot?

Isn't this a little premature? Everyone keeps claiming that robots will be as intelligent as humans in 25-50 years. I'd like to believe that, but, in the meantime, they don't have the sentience of a toaster oven. If we design them properly, they won't need any rights. If they become truly self-aware, then they will. In the meantime, all I want is a robot that can clean the house and look like Kirsten Dunst.

Actually, this scenario was covered in Astroboy in the '60s. A robot was elected president and the humans rebelled and massacred the robots. He promised to fight for robots' rights. It was an allegory about racial prejudice. It's an interesting idea; what happens when our creation becomes as "conscious" as we are? Are we willing to share the rights and priveleges?

It is an interesting question, as far as what denotes sentience, as well as what denotes intelligence. Certainly, we have little empirical evidence as to why a sentient machine would value the same rights as their biological counterparts, considering that they will not share too many of the same biological concerns. I imagine the most difficult part will be keeping the machines interested in any of the menial tasks and actions we value so highly. Think Marvin meets Bender.

Note to self: buy robot, program it to kill Aunt Bertha, robot gets life for murder, profit from life insurance.

What if the robots are gay, will they still not be allowed to marry?

Reproduce on their own? hah i'd like to see a gold robot have a solid gold baby robot. I swear, robots are cool and all, but i'd like to see them stop improving when they will disobey humans, maybe like a servant robot, that looks human, and listens...like..get me coffee..and it does....or gimme your cash i'm mugging you, and it does...and change...and credit card numbers, banking acounts and many nice things.

This is, in a word, ridiculous and yet another idiotic plan by the far left political spectrum. Give them rights, and robots might just vote for you.

Hey! Robots are people too! Wait... no they're not. This is really stupid. Unless of course you are fighting a country without robots. And all the robots are bullet proof. =] Haha. Nah, I think if robots really become so common Honda's robots should stop slipping down the stairs. And they should follow those 3 laws. =] And not go evil like the did in I, Robot. =D

-Dim

I think the movie Millenium Man with Robin Williams pretty much sums it all.

There will come a time where it might be indistinguishable the differences between a natural born human and an engineered bio-mechanical android that is just as sentient as we are.
If they are sentient, we must give them the same rights as humans.
Otherwise it would be slavery. And we have been down that shameful road before.

Did anybody notice the human cop already knees before his robotic overlord?

Does anyone else think it's a bit ridiculous that, at some point in the future, there will be robots who have rights, and millions of humans who don't? Madness.

I've seen Asimo on the stairs. I'm not having my tax dollars go for free hospital care for that drunken slob!

Suppose robots figure out how to talk to grass, and decide I'm committing genocide with the lawnmower... Then the robo stormtroopers show up and blow up my house to save the grass. Yeah, robot rights, great idea. I think maybe some politicians' been spending too much time smoking grass...

We will be ready to give rights to robots in our personal domains, just as pets, and who knows there might be a `bot which might inherit a fortune from its owner some day. All it would take is a furry `bot with some fuzzy logic ( no claims about the pun )

Stairs first, rights later.

But why waste those resources on robots when we can just program them to not want that sort of thing?

Maksimir says:

If robots eventually integrate into society, pay taxes, and reproduce.. if they are not protected by law, they will protect themselves.. imagine a robot dump truck crashing into your living room because you drunkenly decided to throw a stone through its windshield.

that movie comes out next june i believe

strider_mt2k says:

Three laws are enough for any robot.

or are they?
______________________

Look all this means is that at some point we are all gonna have to get explicit permission before we start sexin up our love bots.

Thus begins the fall of mankind.

Long live our robot overlords!

I'm sure this is a pertinent issue.

@anfauglir

Interesting point of view... specially if you consider that, to most religions, humans are a physical representation of a dream, an idea conceived by the mind of someone. His purpose? Remains unknown.

About giving them rigths... if they truly become self consicious, if they manage to understand the concept of free will and show desires, then they will be not much different from us.

Animatrix, here we go...

All robot Battalion? I'm thinking that the segregated military was over with the all black and all Japanese units in WWII. I'm thinking integrated units...but who wants to share a bunk with a robot? I'm taking the top bunk thankyouverymuch.

there is no question why the US won the revolution. as far as i'm concerned a robot is entitled the right to clean my ass. are cars and trucks going to have rights next? then what computers? or women? these brits are IDIOTS!

Sure, why not?

I'm so sleepy I don't really know what's going on anymore...

=_= => -_-

I felt a disturbance as if a million dreams of sexbots were suddenly silenced . . .

Robots must go through some evolution before they are entitled to rights. Sexbot slaves first, healthcare later.

Q: How many sexbots does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. The NAAE-MP* says that isn't funny!
(*The National Association for the Advancement of Electro-Mechanical People).

If we do not then it's gonna be us looking for the lost 12 tribes, not the other way around. You don't create hyper inteligent machines then piss on them. If you do then they send hot sexbots after you and things start to be not cool.

Robots will have rights... but seriously not for a while now. This is probably just a slow-news-day story on futurists.

I'm not worried about the robots, by then I'll be a cyborg. I'll get along just fine.

I know I'll fight any kind of rights they try and create for robot. It's BS. They're just machines, and they are in no way entitled to what I have. None of it.

miscrosoft software activation is gonna be a bitch once they start reproducing

Two words: Robot Sex.