Saw this article linked over at Wake Up America and it got me thinkin’ (always a good read over in spree-land), what will be the hot civil rights topics of the day?
If you haven’t read the article, some excerpts for context:
Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.
It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens’ duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service.
“If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,”
Think of the possible scenarios we will face as a society.
- Should robot “children” be allowed to play sports alongside carbon-based children? If the robot child is better at baseball than your kid (a very likely scenario, I’ve seen your kid play… just kidding), will your kid ride the bench, or maybe not make the team at all?
- Will there be robot schools that are segregated from carbon-unit schools, or will their need to be forced integration? Will the robot schools be so much more advanced that your kid has no chance to excel?
- How about jobs? Do the robots displace the humans if they perform the work better or will there be forced quotas of humans in the workplace?
And of course, the topic that may divide our country on emotional lines so inflammatory that friends would avoid the topic at the dinner tabe for fear of destroying a friendship: 
- When, during manufacturing, does a potential robot actually become a robot and have rights? How late in the process can we legally abort the assembly and toss the parts in a recycle bin? Does “life” begin at concept? Design? Assembly? Testing? Post-production? The ACLU would clearly need to weigh in on this critical issue.
Ah, what a Utopia it will be…
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