For some people, relationships with robots are simply a natural extension of relationships with other things in our world, such as people, pets, and possessions.
Interesting. I can remember, I used to play chess with a very smart software called Fritz. It could greet like a human being. Messages like ‘Good morning dear lady’ and so on appeared in my monitor when I started a game. Every message, every warning was so much human-like that I was attached to Fritz emotionally. While talking to my parents about fritz, I referred to Fritz just like a human being. But at the end of the day, that was just a software… Lets see how much robots evolve in the future.
Yes, you are right. It’s a very interesting and challenging issue. So, I hope, we’ll be able too see the further development in this area.
It would be nice to see humans treat other humans compassionately and given equal rights, let alone rights to sentient creatures like animals, so I don’t see robots gaining rights unless the actual intention is to protect a very expensive purchase and dissuade people from stealing / abusing it.
