Ethics Paper I robot

Topics: Morality, Ethics, Human Pages: 3 (1095 words) Published: February 17, 2014
After watching the movie I, Robot and analyzing it with the concepts of ethics in minds, there are many ethical issues that arise with the technology shown in that movie. The movie takes place in 2035 and is about robots that are programmed with Three Laws: First Law-A robot must never harm a human being or, through inaction, allow any harm to come to a human; Second Law-A robot must obey the orders given to them by human beings, except where such orders violate the First Law; Third Law- A robot must protect its own existence unless this violates the First or Second Laws. (I, Robot, 2004) These robots were to be used by humans as servants for common tasks. The questions concerned with ethics that this movies raises have to do with the ability of the robots to make emotional or ethical decisions, whether they should have the same rights as humans or not, and if robots should be used for battles or wars.

In the movie I, Robot, Will Smith playing the role of a detective, gets saved by a robot when he and a little girl were drowning trapped in a car that fell into the river. The reason, as we find out, that the robot save Smith is because calculations showed that he had a better chance of survival than the little girl did. This causes Will Smith to dislike robots and not trust them with anything throughout the entire movie. This is also a part of the movie that makes the audience think about the decision making abilities of robots. The robot that saved Will Smith instead of the little girl decided solely based on his calculations on which one had a better chance to survive. The question that comes with that is, "what would a human have done?" Due to the fact that Smith had a better chance of surviving, it would have made more sense to help the little girl who was also trapped but because the robot that saved Smith could not make decisions based off of emotion compassion and the little girl drowned. The other concern with this is the ethics of the dicision this...
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