Is It Wrong to Kick a Robot? Towards a Relational and Critical Robot Ethics and Beyond

摘要

Some robots seem to invite either empathy and desire or "violent" behaviour and "abuse". Consider the case of Spot, a robot dog that was kicked by people from the company that created it in order to show that it can regain its balance, or the case of hitchBOT, a hitchhiking robot that was vandalized and destroyed (decapitated) in Philadelphia in 2015. In both cases, many people responded in an empathic way, suggesting in very strong terms that kicking or vandalizing a robot is unethical.