Nah, it's to do with the problems of calling robots persons. They have no qualia nor intentionality, which are both things that humans and other higher animals supposedly have.
Some people feel that robots have the potential to be person, if not now then in future. Presumably this is so they'll be able to build themselves a girlfriend.
Their main reasoning is that, physically, they could very easily outclass the mental capabilities of humans, and humans are our general benchmark for personhood. Our brain is, after all, essentially a super-awesome biological computer.
Key opposition to the debate the idea that robots lack certain characteristics: qualia and intentionality.
Qualia is the raw feels of an experience, such the 'burny-hot-hot' of boiling coffee, and other emotions. All they could do, in theory, is detect that something is extremely hot. They can't feel the actual pain of holding something like that.
Intentionality, on the other hand, is having a motive behind your actions. Robots simply run from code, and have no actual realisation of what they are doing.
This is best illustrated with an example. There's this dude locked in a room, and he has this big-ass manual with him. Chinese people feed questions on cards written in chinese through to him, and he passes cards back according to instructions written in the manual.
He didn't understand chinese, so he wasn't actually answering their questions; he had no intentionality behind his actions.
Problem with your robots never being humans argument Hella: Who's to say that people have qualia and intentionality? Who's to say that the complex chemical interactions in the universe aren't going to continue happening in a set way, and since those chemical interactions determine our decisions. If they are set in stone, then we don't really ever choose do we?
Basically, in a way, chemically, our brain works the same way as your man inside a room. And that we simply think that we have intentionality. And that case, why can't we make robot think it has intentionality as well?
Hehe. I was just outlining the general topic from the points that we'd learnt about.
I personally don't bend that way; I feel that if a being can show the 'necessary' characteristics, such as language, autonomy, etc, to a greater degree, then they have every right to fit into our shitty little person club. :)
There is, though, a whole load of tests designed to look at robots and their personhood potential, like the Turing test. If an AI/robot can fool most people into thinking it is a person during conversation, then it's basically a person. Something like that.
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