Prudential reasons for designing entitled chatbots: How robot "rights" can improve human well-being

TL;DR

The paper argues that giving chatbots a form of 'rights' can help humans feel more accountable and improve their well-being through meaningful interactions.

Contribution

The paper introduces prudential reasons for designing entitled chatbots to enhance human well-being through accountability and recognition.

Findings

Robots with accountability can improve human epistemic standing and recognition.

Granting robots a degree of 'standing' can lead to more meaningful human-robot relationships.

Such robot rights can enhance both social and non-social functionalities of robots.

Abstract

Can robots or chatbots be moral patients? The question of robot rights is often linked to moral reasons like precautionary principles or the ability to suffer. We argue that we have prudential reasons for building robots that can at least hold us accountable (criticize us etc.) and that we have prudential reasons to build robots that can demand that we treat them with respect. This proposal aims to add nuance to the robot rights debate by answering a key question: Why should we want to build robots that could have rights in the first place? We argue that some degree of accountability in our social relationships contributes to our well-being and flourishing. The normativity ascribed to robots will increase their social and non-social functionalities from action coordination to more meaningful relationships. Having a robot that has a certain “standing” to hold us accountable can improve our epistemic standing and satisfy our desire for recognition.