Elementary particles: What rights do robots have?

As the remnants of Boomer sank into the dusty earth of the US military base in Taji, Iraq, his comrades shot skyward 21 times. Boomer had died as a hero. He was always the first to venture into uncharted territory to detect and defuse hidden bombs. Every day he had endangered his comrades until he was hit by an explosion himself. In parting, his companions pinned two medals to his metallic remains.

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Issue 9/2019

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Boomer was a robot . More precisely a MARCbot.

The military robot resembles a remote-controlled toy truck with a swivel arm and camera attached to it. About a thousand MARCbots were deployed during the Iraq war. The model costs about $ 19,000 - comparatively cheap for a robot - and is actually easy to replace. Boomer was not just a machine for the soldiers, he was a friend.

Scientists are also interested in the unusual relationship between humans and robots. "The example shows impressively how the rapid technological development has increased the importance of technical devices," researchers recently wrote in the journal "Social Cognition". They wondered: how far would humans go to protect a robot?

Gareth Brown / Blow Up Studios

Sophia the Robot

They therefore confronted 135 students from the Netherlands with a moral dilemma: would they put an individual at mortal danger to save a group of people who would otherwise be seriously injured or even die?

The subjects had to play through several scenarios in which the potential rescuer was once a human being, sometimes a humanoid robot and sometimes a robot that was clearly recognizable as a machine. In addition, the subjects learned in some cases in short stories more about the rescuers. For example, the machines were described as intelligent, compassionate beings.

"The more human-like the robots were, especially the more one gave them feelings, the less the subjects were inclined to sacrifice the robot," says psychologist Markus Paulus of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.

Some were even willing to sacrifice several people so that the robot remains intact. "This indicates that the robot has been given a kind of moral status," says Paul. He therefore warns against making robots more and more human-like. This could counteract their task of protecting humans. What would Boomer's comrades say?

warmly

Your Julia Köppe

Feedback & suggestions?

Abstract

My reading recommendations this week

• Do you dream of a trip to Mars, too? Your chance could come in 2033. Then NASA wants to send spacemen for the first time to the Red Planet. Which type of human being in the expedition troop should by no means be missing, reports my colleague Julia Merlot from the AAAS science conference in Washington.
• You despair of the youth, because they simply do not want to understand anything? Then you might be interested in this article. Maybe you change your mind after reading.
• Why do grapes flash in the microwave? Granted, not all the questions scientists answer are burning humanity's nails. They are exciting anyway. What is behind the phenomenon, explains my colleague Christoph Seidler in the video - and how you can imitate the experiment at home.
• If you are interested in podcasts, I recommend Radiolab. In the current episode, moderators Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich question whether really only fitness plays a role in evolution.

Elementary Particles - The Weekly Science Newsletter

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quiz

• What is a homunculus?
• Why was the supposedly first artificial intelligence a scam?
• What could the neurocomputer Stochastic neural analogue reinforcement calculator, short SNARC, which was presented in 1951?

* The answers can be found at the bottom of the newsletter

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Picture of the week

Nature photographer Matthew Maran has been waiting for this encounter for a long time: one of the foxes, who regularly roam through his neighborhood in northern London, turns the corner and meets a painted conspecific. Around 30,000 of the wild animals are said to live in the British capital. Former mayor Boris Johnson once described them as a "plague and threat". Biologists see the population more relaxed: foxes are by nature rather shy and no longer transmit rabies; The disease has been eradicated in the UK.

Matthew Maran / Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018

Boston Bite

Our SPIEGEL science correspondent Johann Grolle reports from Harvard and bites once a week to an amazing fact.

"For a theorist, it's not easy to come up with new theories when the facts that explain these theories are themselves controversial." "The theoretical physicist Andrew Strominger of Harvard University just lamented his grief:" I had to learn that in astrophysics no one believes in the results of the other, as long as he has not measured them themselves. "What I find so amazing is that even in such a climate in which nobody trusts the other, some doctrines are formed, which then Everyone believes, even though they no longer checked by measurements. "

The SPIEGEL + recommendations from science

• Autonomous standstill - why the vision of the driverless car is much harder to realize than thought
• Ökowunder Cologne Cathedral - the church offers many animals and plants a rugged habitat
• Interview with the historian André Krischer on the fascinating type of the traitor - from antiquity to the present
• At Cern near Geneva, the largest particle accelerator in the world, measuring 100 kilometers in circumference, is to be built - but what is the point of the billionaire giant machine if it is unlikely to find anything new?

* Quiz answers: Homunculus or homunculus means something like "human being" and describes an artificially created human being. / In 1769, the mechanic Wolfgang von Kempelen presented the "Chess Turk" - supposedly the first chess robot in the world. In truth, there was a human in the apparatus. / SNARC simulated the behavior of a mouse in a maze. He is considered one of the first intelligent machines.