Do humans see life in robots?
Are robots agents? Can robots be sentient?
Can robots show life?
One of the interesting debates in contemporary times is whether robots can ever be perceived as agents, having the independence to take actions and make sound moral judgement and decisions. One of the early positions on this is taken by Professor Selmer Bringsjord who in his paper titled “Ethical Robots: The Future Can Heed Us” argues that we don’t need to fear robots, we need to fear what people would do with robots because ultimately robots will do what humans program them to do. A counterpoint is offered by Professor John Sullins, who has argued that under certain circumstances, robots should be seen as moral agents, because they could potentially have autonomous thinking, and judgement to decide whether a decision is good or bad. Although Prof. Sullins views could have been labelled as science fiction when his paper was published in 2006, advances in Machine Learning (ML) have shown that it is possible for robots …