via The Sunday Times

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

…“Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen,” said Verruggio. “Robots will develop strong intelligence, and in some ways it will be better than human intelligence.

“But it will be alien intelligence; I would prefer to give priority to humans.”

…“My guess is that we’ll have conscious machines before 2020,” said Ian Pearson, futurologist-in-residence at BT. “If we put that in a robot, it’s an android. That is an enormous ethical change.”

To critics who scoff that intelligent robots are a long way off, the roboticists easily riposte that machines can already exert surprising influence over our lives — think about the influence of the internet.

Keeping control

New robo-ethics recommendations
# Safety Ensure human control of robot
# Security Prevent wrong or illegal use
# Privacy Protect data held by robot o Traceability Record robot’s activity
# Identifiability Give unique ID to each robot

Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics
# Robot may not injure human or, through inaction, allow human to come to harm
# Robot must obey human orders, unless they conflict with first law
# Robot must protect itself if this does not conflict with other laws