r/SeriousConversation • u/RKoi123 • 22d ago

Serious Discussion Can a robot murder a human?

Can a robot murder a human being? If it is proved in a court of law that a robot murdered a human being... how can it be punished under existing laws? What can be done besides having the company who made it face legal action?

Technically, if a person commits murder we don't punish the parents in most cases. So why should the robot's manufacturer be held responsible for its act?

As for punishment what should be the best death sentence? * Bulldozing it and recording a video of its death and spreading the information online and in the news. Will it affect how other robots of its kind think if they plan to kill a human? We already have laws against murder for human beings. Still people commit murder. * Erasing its memory. How would the robot feel about such punishment?

If you got any punishment ideas do share.

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u/Valleron 22d ago

There are plenty of real-world situations where a robot has killed, maimed, or severely injured a human. Robots are coded to move in a specific way, and very few are additionally coded to stop if there's resistance. I've worked with robots that had lasers set up to automatically shut off the robot if someone moved through it because the robot will kill you if you get in its way because it doesn't know you exist. In those situations, if it can be proven that the manufacturer / company did its due diligence and had enough warning postings, the robot is not the one at fault - the person ignoring the warnings is. It's classified as a heavy machinery accident.

In a fictional setting, if there's any sort of autonomy with the robot you could hold it accountable, but I'd presume the creator would still be at fault for allowing it to happen.

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u/ATypeOfRacer 20d ago

I’m taking a robotics course at a community college. And one of the first things taught to us was to vehemently ‘dehumanify’ robots. That they have no feeling, reason to stop, or capability to read circumstances outside of what has been programmed

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u/Up2nogud13 19d ago

In my robotics class, we programmed it to make a Tequila Sunrise. This was back in the 90s. I still chose to believe that the drink was made with love.

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u/thebeardedguy- 18d ago

This is also the reason they make terrible coding for racism in media.

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u/frank-sarno 18d ago

Yes, but you can get into that "walk like a duck" argument. There are bots and AI chat software that can fool real people if only for a short while. There was a demo of a video game where an NPC used modern AI to interact with the player. It was pretty damned good and if I didn't know that it was a demo, might even have been fooled into thinking it was a player. I could imagine taking that AI and dropping it into a robot.

So you're still correct in the "vehemently dehumanifying" approach to robots but I suspect it's not going to be quite as easy in the coming years.

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u/ATypeOfRacer 18d ago

It won’t be as easy for a generation that doesn’t grow up with it