A Department for Trade & Industry commissioned report (i.e. we paid for it) has advised the Government to prepare for Robo-rights. Yes - Robo-rights. Like Human rights, but for robots. What a great idea? I mean, C-3P0 was a sensitive chap and R2DT had serious communication and walking difficulties. If only they had lived in New Labour's bonkers world, they wouldn't have been sold on the slave trade and forced to serve their master Luke Skywalker. Has this government run out of things to be PC about (excuse the pun)? Have they really run out of rights to give humans and are now trying to find something new to spend hour upon hour using our money to legislate for? You can hardly have imagined Martin Luther King having a dream about this one or Emily Pankhurst going on hunger strike until the robots are given the vote. Once again the government is getting involved in something it knows little about and has no place in sticking it's nose in. Owen Holland, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex, said that he was disappointed by the quality of the work - “It was very shallow, superficial and poorly informed. I know of no one within the serious robotics community who would use that phrase, ‘robot rights’.”
If you want to know why the government has wasted yet more of your money on something so incredibly ridiculous as this contact the DTI and ask for Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (020 7215 5000). Whilst your there, ask him about the other 200 reports he has commissioned too will you please?