Bob Cook <frobertc...@hotmail.com> wrote: A simple law will fix the problem of robots replacing people. The main > features of such a law follow: > > Only real persons shall be allowed to own a robot free of tax. > Additional robots can be owned by any given biological person, but at an > increasing tax as deemed necessary to keep their numbers down will be > levied. . . . >
Similar proposals have been discussed here before. Let me reiterate some objections: First, we do not want to keep the numbers down, and we have no right to do that. People and corporations should have as many robots as they want, just as they have as many computers as they want. Second, there is no way to define a robot or to count the number of robots you have. A robot can range from something as simple as the microprocessor control in a microwave machine, to the Baxter robot, or in the future up to a science fiction sentient human-like creature. By the first and lowest standard, I own dozens of robots already, and you can't tell where one starts and the other ends. There are probably several microprocessor controllers inside a Prius or other modern automobile. I expect that future robots will be modular and networked, with attachments or peripherals that can be used by different robots at different times. When you need some function that your own robot does not do, the robot will download it, or use additional robot intelligence in the cloud, or order an attachment part. Trying to counting robots will be kind of like trying to count computers. If I have one computer with two screens which uses a net-connected stand-alone hard disk and remote cloud storage, and both local and cloud-based apps, is that one computer, or two, or many? The question is meaningless. Is an iPad or Chromebook a computer at all? In 1975 I would have called them "smart terminals" rather than computers. Finally, the moment you try to regulate such things, powerful people and unscrupulous people will find ways to get around the regulations. They will have as many robots as they want, and they will easily find ways to stop the authorities from enumerating those robots. Especially small robots, the size of mice or cell phones, which I expect will be ubiquitous sometime in the future. - Jed
