Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond

摘要

Robots are a curious sort of thing. On the one hand, they are designed and manufactured technological artifacts. They are things. Yet, and on the other hand, these things are not quite like other things. They seem to have social presence. They are able to talk and interact with us. And many are designed to mimic or simulate the capabilities and behaviors that are commonly associated with human or non-human animal intelligence. Robots, therefore, invite and encourage zoomorphism, anthropomorphism, and even personification. This paper sets out to answer the vexing question: What exactly is a robot? Rather than try to fit robots into the existing moral and legal categories by way of arguing for either their reification or personification, however, the paper will argue for a revolutionary reformulation of the entire system, developing a new approach to technology law and ethics that can scale to the unique opportunities and challenges of the twenty-first century and beyond. (This paper was presented at at the Robophilosophy 2024 Conference in Workshop 10: “Robot Rights—From Theory to Practice,” organized by David Gunkel.)