I believe fiction plays an important role in shaping the philosophy of science. Forward-looking science fiction, especially, considers issues that have yet to be encountered by society, providing the opportunity to decide how to handle or avoid those issues in advance.

In the case of robots, I was imagining a line from the less-than-serious The Simpsons, when a robot flees a flaming building, asking, "Why was I programmed to feel pain?" ( http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ-ggzfdsMs ). Indeed, why would a robot be designed to suffer when enough suffering exists already? We should design our non-sentient robots now with that thought in mind, in anticipation of the possibility of creating self-aware AI.