The Commited MAY 2015 | Page 48

TED ATAKENT COLLEGE / 8-B Should Robots Be Accepted As ‘People’? Mümtaz AHMETOĞLU 46 Have you ever heard about rights? Or have you ever heard about a robot that needs rights? Do robots need any assurance? Can we count a robot as a human? A robot is an autonomous machine which is capable of being aware of its own environment, carrying out orders to make decisions, and perform actions in the real world. However, robots can never make their own decisions because a robot is always controlled by a computer. It means it’s always controlled by someone or something. Human rights are given to a person who can make his own decisions and who can think about his own life. Can you imagine that your fridge talks about his rights and wants you to pay? Or even your phone doesn’t want to work. Isn’t it strange that a device can’t even decide their needs and rights? We, as human beings, are different because each of us has feelings and thoughts, but robots or machines don’t have any of them. On the other hand, humans are social. We have feelings, have rights because we are always in touch with others. Clearly, when we communicate with others, we need rights to be on the safe side. Robots are made for a purpose. They don’t need rights to exist. Moreover, robots are just devices which make our lives easier. So, we can never talk about a robot’s psychology. Robots will never care about their own psychological problems. Considering all of the above, a robot can never be a human being or can never be given human rights because robots don’t need any self -protection. Due to this, they can’t think, they can’t feel or even do any actions on their own. So why should we give them human rights? Why should we count them as humans? There are no answers for these questions. In conclusion we don’t need to give a robot any rights because they are just created to solve problems, they are not created to live a life as a human.