Should Robots Be Granted Human Rights?

The number of collaborative robots, or cobots, being put to work in offices everywhere is rising. Korea, for example, has a robot density of 631 units per 10 000 employees. And, increasingly, people are treating these machines like human beings.

- Mariam Isa

Much has been made of the threat that robots pose to our jobs, as rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) make them capable of taking over a widening range of white-collar professions. But there is another concern.

The new generation of collaborative robots designed to interact with the human beings they work independently alongside – which are more accurately known as cobots – are becoming so much like us in appearance and behaviour that people are becoming attached to them.

Even robots that do not look like humans are being anthropomorphised as people project emotions and personalities onto them, making them the companions that up until this decade were only imagined in popular science-fiction novels and films.

A few years ago, the US military in Iraq held an official funeral complete with a 21-gun salute for a bomb disposal robot that was blown up while on duty. The robot, Boomer, was mourned like a fellow soldier and decorated with two prestigious medals for bravery – the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.

There are many other examples. In September last year, employees at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation threw a retirement party for five robots that had delivered the mail in their offices for a quarter of a century, beeping endearingly to warn people to get out of their way in corridors.