The suspected workplace suicide of a robot earlier this year has led boffins to question whether the piece of tech could experience emotions.
In June, a South Korean civil service robot was feared to have committed suicide by hurling itself down a flight of stairs. The cyborg, which looked like a white bin with a screen on on its side, was designed to deliver documents to residents.
However, it apparently ended its “life” by throwing itself over a stairwell after apparently blowing a fuse from boredom while slaving away for Gumi City Council and suffering an emotional breakdown. If correct, it was the first ever instance of robot suicide.
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South Korea's Gumi City Council's administrative officer robot
But if so, it must have feelings - mind blowing (Image: Gumi City Council /AFP via Getty)
The case has been puzzling technologists, philosophers, and academics, as for a robot to deliberately kill itself, it must be sentient.
While emotionally sensitive robots have long been a thing of science fiction, the concept of “ambiguously sentient” AI is as relatively new idea.
Professor Jonathan Birch, an academic in philosophy at LSE and author of The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI, believes we’re not far off seeing AI that can feel a range of emotions.
He told the Independent: “By ‘ambiguously sentient’, I mean that some people will be absolutely convinced that their AI companion is a sentient being with a rich inner life, and will be angered when others deny this.
“Meanwhile, others will be equally convinced that these AI companions feel absolutely nothing.
“It won’t be possible to tell who is right, because our scientific understanding of sentience is not yet mature enough for that. And this has the potential to lead to very serious social divisions.”
The academic has called for tech companies to recognise the risk and support further research in the area.
In South Korea, where robots make up 10% of the workforce - significantly higher than anywhere else, and only one nation of two to surpass 5% - many workers already see their robotic colleagues as sensitive souls, and a kind of semiconscious being that deserves a level of dignity, rights and respect.
More robots have seemingly tried to kill themselves following the South Korean incident, the Independent also reports.