Tech Shout!

South Korea, which has been deemed as one of the major tech-savvy countries in Asia is all ready to draw up a code of ethics for robots. This move is being undertaken as South Korea predicts that there will be a robot in every household in a decade from now.

A 12-member task force that includes scientists, lawyers and doctors has been assigned by the commerce ministry to set up a code of ethics for robots. In fact, by the end of 2007, they want to have a set of rules ready, in order to prevent android abuse as well as to define proper relations between robots and humans.

In fact according to Kim Jae-jin, a Songang University robotics student, after seeing so many sci-fi movies where robots wise up against humans, a code of conduct is absolutely necessary.

It has been realized that much of South Korea’s population mainly the ageing people who will start to rely on robots for tasks such as cleaning houses. But, aside from this, it is predicted that people will also be relying on robots for other tasks such as patrolling the heavily armed border of North Korea as well we to perform surgeries.

So what will robots be able to do and what will they be not programmed to do? Well, officials have said that the code of ethics for robots may borrow from the laws of robotics written around 60 years ago by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, the author of “I, Robot”.

According to Asimov’s three laws, robots must not injure humans or allow harm to come to them. Secondly, robots must obey orders given by humans unless those orders conflict with the first law. The third law states that robots have to protect their own existence as long as that protection does not violate the other two laws.

“We have to show people that science is safe and work with robots is guided by ethics,” Kim said.