Robots are becoming integral part of our Life. Robots have started playing significant role in each and every field. Their ability is getting improved sharply day by day due to the fast development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Apart from getting used as Toys for Kids, Robots are becoming friends and act as care takers for elders in Japan. Even they do dangerous jobs, such as detecting and dismantling mines.
These non-living Objects are getting trained to act with Human emotions. So, people are struggling to set their moral stance toward these non-living objects.
During previous research, People refused to turn off Robot when it asked them not to, even though they were instructed to turn off the Robot. That showed that People started giving more priority to Robot over Human.
A new research from Radboud University shows that People are prepared to save a robot at the cost of human lives under certain conditions. One of these situations is when we believe the robot can experience pain.
“It is known that military personnel may mourn a robot that is used to clear mines in the army. Funerals are organised for them. We wanted to investigate how far this empathy for robots extends, and what moral principles influence behaviour towards robots. Little research has been done in this area as of yet.“
Behavioral scientist Sari Nijssen
The central question of the research was the extent to which people are prepared to sacrifice robots to save human lives. The test subjects were presented with a moral dilemma and the question of whether they would sacrifice an individual to save a group of wounded people. In the different scenarios, the individual was a person, a robot with human traits, or a robot that was presented as a simple machine.
The research indicated that the more the robot was seen as human, the more difficult the dilemma was for the test subjects. When the robot was presented as a conscious being with its own thoughts, experiences, pain, and emotions, the test subjects were less likely to sacrifice the robot in favour of anonymous people.
News Source: https://www.ru.nl/english/news-agenda/news/vm/bsi/2019/what-value-robot-life/
