When a robot harms humans, are there any grounds for holding it criminally liable for its misconduct? Yes, provided that the robot is capable of making, acting on, and communicating the reasons behind its moral decisions. If such a robot fails to observe the minimum moral standards that society requires of it, labeling it as a criminal can effectively fulfill criminal law’s function of censuring wrongful conduct and alleviating the emotional harm that may be inflicted on human victims.
Imposing criminal liability on robots does not absolve robot manufacturers, trainers, or owners of their individual criminal liability. The former is not rendered redundant by the latter. It is possible that no human is sufficiently at fault in causing a robot to commit a particular morally wrongful action. Additionally, imposing criminal liability on robots might sometimes have significant instrumental value, such as helping to identify culpable individuals and serving as a self-policing device for individuals who interact with robots. Finally, treating robots that satisfy the above-mentioned conditions as moral agents appears much more plausible if we adopt a less human-centric account of moral agency.
'In Defense of Artificial Replacement' by Derek Shiller in (2017) 31 Bioethics 393-399 comments
If it is within our power to provide a significantly better world for future generations at a comparatively small cost to ourselves, we have a strong moral reason to do so. One way of providing a significantly better world may involve replacing our species with something better. It is plausible that in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to create artificially intelligent creatures with whatever physical and psychological traits we choose. Granted this assumption, it is argued that we should engineer our extinction so that our planet's resources can be devoted to making artificial creatures with better lives.
The pace of technological change is very difficult to predict far in advance, but our current trajectory makes it reasonable to guess that we will have the power to create genuine artificial intelligence – artificially created individuals that equal or surpass human beings in all dimensions of cognition, including creativity, power, insight, and wisdom – by the close of this century. Some futurists1 have worried about our species’ continued existence after this development. Such concerns are motivated by the recognition that it may be difficult to predict and control artificial creatures that are smarter than we are. There is something selfish about this fear and the ethically responsible thing for us to do may be to engineer our own extinction.
In this paper, I will present a simple speculative argument for what I will call the Artificial Replacement Thesis. The Artificial Replacement Thesis suggests that we should replace our species with artificial creatures who are capable of living better lives. I will start by introducing several assumptions that will be integral to my argument. In the second section, I will defend a supplemental principle that I call the Future Beneficence Principle, that says that we should go out of our way to improve the well-being of future generations, even if our actions will change who comes to exist. With these foundations laid, I will present my argument for the Artificial Replacement Thesis in the third section. I will spend the remainder of this paper formulating and replying to salient objections. …
My argument for the Artificial Replacement Thesis relies on two assumptions, which I will take for granted in the remainder of this paper.
First, I will assume that we will have the power to create intelligent artificial minds that resemble natural minds in every morally relevant way we wish. Morally relevant ways might include: consciousness, cognitive flexibility, emotional capacity, capacity for happiness and unhappiness, ability to engage in interpersonal relationships, creativity, freedom of the will (in whatever sense we have it), and philosophical, religious, or artistic insight. Whatever nature can do with clumps of neurons, we will be able to do artificially. If this assumption is correct, it means that with the right design, artificial creatures will be able to fall in love, experience exquisite joy, write novels that probe existential self-doubt, ponder the basic metaphysical structure of reality, and appreciate the beauty of mathematical theorems. …
I think that we cannot ignore the possibility that we will be able to create artificial creatures with lives of optimal well-being in the not-too-distant future. If we can do that, a genuine utopia on Earth may be within our grasp. We must merely have the grace to step out of the way to let it happen.
