Could Social Robots Make Us Kinder or Crueller to Humans and Animals?

Abstract

The Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence states that emerging technologies ought not “encourage cruel behaviour towards robots that take on the appearance of human beings or animals and act in a similar fashion.” The idea of a causal link between cruelty and kindness to artificial and living beings, human or animal, is controversial and underexplored, despite its increasing relevance to robotics. Kate Darling recently marshalled Immanuel Kant’s argument—that cruelty to animals promotes cruelty to people—to argue for an analogous link concerning social robots. Others, such as Johnson and Verdicchio, have counter-argued that animal analogies are often fla..