Kicking a robot dog

Abstract

In February 2015, a video posted online by Boston Dynamics, showing a man kicking their quadruped robot "Spot" in order to demonstrate the robot's capacity to regain its balance, "went viral". A number of media websites subsequently published stories asking whether it was wrong to kick a robot dog. Most pundits seemed to conclude that there was nothing wrong with kicking a robot as long as doing so didn't encourage the kicker to go on to kick living things. In this presentation I want to revisit this controversy and argue that, according to one plausible ethical framework at least, kicking a robot may be wrong regardless of its impact on the future behavior of the kicker and/or the sufferings of other sentient creatures. An "agent-based virtue ethics" evaluates actions according to what they reveal about the character of an agent. That is to say, kicking a robot dog might be wrong simply because it reveals the kicker to be cruel or vicious in their dispositions. However, what our behavior towards robots says about us will also depend upon the behavior of the robot and, in particular, its capacity to express emotions that in turn determine the reasonableness of our interpretation of its treatment. In designing robots, then, we are also shaping the opportunities that users have to demonstrate virtues and vices in their interactions with the robot. I offer some tentative suggestions as to why it might often be more plausible to attribute vices than virtues on the basis of a person's treatment of a robot. I conclude with some observations about the ways in which this complexifies the project of the ethical design of robots.