Although South Korea has still not recovered from the bioethics scandal of Hwang Woo-suks’s faked cloning data and coercive egg donation, it is busy drawing up an ethical code for dealing with robots.

Although South Korea has still not recovered from the bioethics scandal of Hwang Woo-suks’s faked cloning data and coercive egg donation, it is busy drawing up an ethical code for dealing with robots. “The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence [sic] in the near future,” says a spokesman.

South Korea is one of the world’s most high-tech societies. A recent government report has predicted that robots will be doing surgery by the year 2018 and that every household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020. As the drive towards scenarios envisaged in science fiction novels and films accelerates, the government wants to set ground rules early. “Imagine if some people treat androids as if the machines were their wives,” said a government spokesman. Some key issues are ensuring human control over robots, protecting data acquired by robots and preventing their illegal use.

Michael Cook
Creative commons
Korea
robot ethics