Reminds me of http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05...

  the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-
  insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked 
  beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it 
  up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to 
  move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a 
  path through the minefield.

  Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself 
  forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working 
  splendidly.

  The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army 
  colonel -- blew a fuse. 
  [...]
  This test, he charged, was inhumane.

And your story reminds me of a story my dad used to tell about one deer season when they spotted a huge buck.

Someone shot and it shot both of the deer's front legs right off, but it amazingly it hopped into the woods using only its rear legs.

They tracked it for a while, and spotted it again.

Then another shot, and one of the rear legs flew off.

It fell over, but still it kept pushing its way along with its remaining leg.

They kept tracking it.

Finally, they caught sight of it again, and shot its last leg right off.

Unfortunately, the deer still got away.

They couldn't track it anymore, and lost its trail.

This is the most terrible and cruel story I've read all day :(

Don't worry, the deer is still alive and doing well.

I just saw him coming down a hill the other day.

I call him Snowball.

Charles Stross, commenting on Saturn's Children, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/crib-she...

"A society that runs on robot slaves who are, nevertheless, intelligent by virtue of having a human neural connectome for a brain, is a slave society: deeply unhealthy if not totally diseased. "

I mean, absolutely, that would morally and, hopefully, legally wrong. Moreover, there are many ways to evaluate "intelligence", and it's not even clear that such criteria are the correct ways to judge whether a creature is a moral patient, a moral actor, or neither (for lack of better terms).

All that said, I think it's fairly clear that Spot is just a dumb machine. Some of its descendants might be more, but we haven't gotten close to the "robot slave" point.

Scale this[0] up to 100 billion simulated neurons (feasible on dod budget), and it will probably operate way beyond a single human, or groups humans can do. Build multiple of them, and the ancestors can just copy the models built at t0=0 and be as intelligent as one that spent the time to build those models, takes us ~20 years to do the same for humans (maybe less so over time, but not on the order of what can be done with something like this).

Some relevant quotes from Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040:

"They exist as substitutes for the lower castes, the indentured labour, for all manners in which humans formerly oppressed their own. Slaves."

"Why do I exist? Was my purpose to replace humans, whose inability to coexist in peace is their evolutionary flaw? Or was my destiny to serve as the progenitor of a subservient race? I do not know. I did not ask to be born."

"A being is a being. A machine is a machine. Most humans would believe these two states to be exclusive, separate orders of existence. And yet, they are not. The key is neotiny, the retention of characteristics from an earlier stage of development. A human fetus follows the path paved by its ancestors, evolving in the womb from unicellular, to amphibian, to mammal, to man. There were those who believed that humanity was the end of the progression, the end product of natural evolution. They were wrong."

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2851663/Are-b...

Leaving aside robots for a moment, look at what happens to human labor markets after trade agreements with countries that have ... different labor standards.

It's our human choice whether we race to the bottom (cost reduction) or race to the top (agency). If we're going to play god, should we seek to build slaves or agents with some degree of freedom? Or require devices to have realtime human-agency guidance?

I think you're conflating several issues.

I don't think it's a choice between "race to the bottom" or "race to the top". Someone needs to do dangerous, nasty, repetitive jobs if we want to maintain a standard of living that many people have become used to. Creatures with the sort of agency you're describing are, in my opinion, unsuited to those tasks, for several reasons, including moral and economic reasons. The robots we are increasingly using to do those jobs are much better suited, and there isn't (again, in my opinion) a moral objection that solely applies to such machines.

That said, our policies are woefully out of date in the face of such increasing automation. Our current system inflates employment and even a meager standard of living. We are going to need to revise our polices, both in the more developed nations and in those that have, as you so tastefully put it, "different labor standards". I don't know how to do this. There are many proposals; a popular one is the basic income guarantee. I'm not educated or intelligent enough to really understand the implications of such a policy, but I can agree that the just and humane treatment of all creatures with the agency you're talking about is among the best guiding principles that I can think of.

The two issues raised above (whether it is moral to use a machine for automation, and the fair treatment of creatures with agency) is separate from the point related to the development of human-manufactured creatures with agency. We don't know how to do it yet, but we are slowly working towards it. Assuming that we eventually do figure it out, that will be a victory as long as we treat our new children like we would treat our homo sapiens children. The research and development of such creatures with agency and those for industrial automation are not mutually exclusive, and serve different purposes.

To try to put it a different way: something is going to need to harvest fruit. It's a shit job. I would rather have Spot do it than a person of any variety, human or otherwise.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Should we allow some of our creations to have access to their design docs and source code? How about private communication with each other?

There's also a property/control rights question: should the manufacturer and/or regulator of the autonomous device always have a remote override, or should the purchaser/owner of the device have exclusive control over software policy? Analogies can be made with DRM and autos.

Nevertheless I expect to see those BigDog like robots walking among us in the near future (10 years ?) as police/firefighters and other services.

When things are this cost effective( no one dying in action) they are adopted very fast.

I agree, I feel the same way, and I felt that the previous time, when they were demonstrating stability of their Big Dog. Seeing this robot being kicked evokes in me feelings of anger directed toward the preson doing the kicking. It feels as if they're kicking a dog for absolutely no reason.

These videos from Boston Dynamics highlights how little it takes for people to have strong emotions toward inanimate objects. This will be interesting to explore, though I'm not happy about more advertisers doing things like that stupid IKEA lamp ad which hijacked audience's feeling of compassion.

Also, to add to your comment, I can imagine that designers will at least test the effect of "dressing" these robots with animal costumes so to speak. Imagine Spot with a dog costume, so it looks more like a dog.

You could study different human reactions. For example, are soldiers more likely to trust their robot companions if they look closer to an animal? or maybe they will trust it more if it doesn't? Putting on an animal costume generates more, or does it generate less fear/terror on the enemy?, etc etc.

And then this will in turn prompt, I'm guessing, the ability to conduct psychological studies about human response to animal cruelty for example, without actually harming an animal, as seen in this thread by a lot of people reporting being angry when the robot was kicked by the staff.

Imagine a robot that behaves like a dog (a lot more than Aibo does), and you program it with "pain" responses, sound, etc. You could maybe even use that (just speculating here of course) as a metric for sociopathy/lack of empathy problems.

I wonder if that would be an effective way to protect an unattended robot. If it quakes and whimpers when people touch it, or yelps and scrambles away when attacked, would people leave it alone? Obviously it wouldn't stop someone determined to cause harm, but it might get the desired response from someone who wants to look with their hands or mess with it for fun.

There is also the possibility that such reactions might actually offend some people, who might interpret it as an attempt by the robot's creators to "play god". To technically inclined people like us, the whole thing is pretty demystified, but I can easily imagine some people who don't understand the mechanism to see it as a sort of "tower of babel" deal.

I felt the same way. I think the dynamic way it moves is what evokes the anthropomorphic feeling for me, more than its physical appearance. It has a lively bounce to its step. When it looks like it's struggling to catch its balance, that's literally what it's doing. Reminds me of some kind Disney or Pixar table or other inanimate object brought to life through movement.

At the end, I just imagined the robot dog running out into traffic.

They should have used a large cartoon style boxing glove contraptions instead. Same demonstration, less dog cruelty looking: http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/165927334-boxing-glove-cont...

it's a robot

...that's the point. Some people have strong emotional reaction when they see this robot being kicked even though this is clearly, obviously, a robot. They haven't, as far as I know, built in any emotional engagement stuff. They could easily build in a few movements - robot pauses, cranes head towards human companion, makes noise, robot continues - which would freak a few people out.

It's a pretty remarkable robot.

yes, and hopefully, 10 years down the line it is not merged with an ai which can take a dim view of it's predecessors being kicked around on some carbon based life form's whims and fancies (after watching it's genesis)

Except it is in the AI's interest to get kicked like that. This way the company that constructs robots can show how reliable they are, and as a result receive more funding. Our robot overlords will show this to their "children" during history classes.

Or in other words: there is no reason to expect that AI will have irrational feelings similar to human feelings.

I dunno, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where the AI realizes being kicked is counter to its goals and decides to remove the aggressor. Especially when these things are used for combat, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Friend/foe indicator malfunctioning? Well, good luck.

I think in this context, it would be more equivalent to sparring than anything: a test of one's abilities. A sufficiently-intelligent AI would likely think the same should it watch videos of its predecessors being kicked during testing.

Oh, you optimist. Do you know about Roko's Basilisk?

ANNs have feelings as well ;)

That's exactly what my wife said! Wildly exciting to watch either way though.

Agreed!

Imagine a future where the artificial neural network decides that humans are unfit for life on this planet because that guy kicked the robot and the data about the event lived in perpetuity. Talk about long memory.

It almost seems like an underestimated aspect of human nature, the value or role of atrophy of knowledge, lack of focus, and distraction from importance in our process of bumbling from one fuck-up to the next in the most convoluted path possible towards improved living circumstances.

Exactly, it's a disgusting attitude. IMHO, our future robots shouldn't be built by people without some sense for aesthetics.