Korean Robot Ethics Charter

Posted 7 Mar 2007 at 17:28 UTC by steve

Several readers submitted links to a BBC article about the South Korean Robot Ethics Charter which will be released later this year. The Charter is an attempt by a panel of "experts" (futurists and a science fiction author) to write a "set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future". This is a government project of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Engery. The charter includes guidelines for the robots themselves but the main focus seems to be on dealing with social problems such as human abuse of robots, humans becoming addicted to "robot interaction", using robots illegally and even humans who want to marry their robots. Apparently the guidelines will also require full human control over robots, which may not sit well with other organizations such as the UK group that is worried about assuring future intelligent robots are granted the same rights to political autonomy as humans. See our previous story on the UK robot rights plan. For more on the Korean Robot Ethics Charter, see the KBS Global story. Also, to put this story in perspective, keep in mind that Korea is actively installing border robots that are capably of killing humans autonomously, so maybe a few rules aren't a bad idea.