Ethical Code for Robot Use?

South Korea has invested much in robotics and wishes to ensure they are ethically treated - check this news report out.

What I find peculiar is the notion that robots should have rights:

"The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future," the ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said."

Why should rights follow intelligence? Usually rights follow sentience, and that requires feelings or a body that can be hurt. Imagine buying a machine, a robot, and being criminalised for abusing it, say scratching your own car.

Last December a UK report from government actually "predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as a human being".

As I have said in earlier blogs, increased computing power does not equal intelligence, and intelligence alone does not inexorably convey rights.

I say a robot is a machine, and that is all that it is or can ever be: a slave that exists to serve us. They should not be given rights and the ethical code should always have the focus of our protection, not the protection of the machines.

Should a robot become sentient or corporeal, perhaps an android, they shall cease to be robots, and then I shall have no qualms considering their rights.

Words matter. A robot is a slave, or let us not call it a robot.