The rights of machines

caring for robotic care-givers

David J. Gunkel

pp. 151-166

in: Simon van Rysewyk, Matthijs Pontier (eds), Machine medical ethics, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

Work in the field of machine medical ethics, especially as it applies to healthcare robots, generally focuses attention on controlling the decision making capabilities and actions of autonomous machines for the sake of respecting the rights of human beings. Absent from much of the current literature is a consideration of the other side of this issue. That is, the question of machine rights or the moral standing of these socially situated and interactive technologies. This chapter investigates the moral situation of healthcare robots by examining how human beings should respond to these artificial entities that will increasingly come to care for us. A range of possible responses will be considered bounded by two opposing positions. We can, on the one hand, deal with these mechanisms by deploying the standard instrumental theory of technology, which renders care-giving robots nothing more than tools and therefore something we do not really need to care about. Or we can, on the other hand, treat these machines as domestic companions that occupy the place of another person in social relationships, becoming someone we increasingly need to care about. Unfortunately neither option is entirely satisfactory, and it is the objective of this chapter not to argue for one or the other but to formulate the opportunities and challenges of ethics in the era of robotic caregivers.