Robots are becoming more visible parts of our life, a situation which prompts questions about their place in our society. One group of issues that is widely discussed is connected with robots’ moral and legal status as well as their potential rights. The question of granting robots rights is polarizing. Some positions accept the possibility of granting them human rights whereas others reject the notion that robots can be considered potential rights holders. In this paper, I claim that robots will (...) never have all human rights, even if we accept that they are morally equal to humans. I focus on the role of embodiment in the content of the law. I claim that even relatively small differences in the ontologies of entities could lead to the need to create new sets of rights. I use the example of Neanderthals to illustrate that entities similar to us might have required different legal statuses. Then, I discuss the potential legal status of human-like robots. (shrink)

Whether or not we call a love-like relationship with robots true love, some people may feel and claim that, for them, it is a sufficient substitute for love relationship. The love relationship between humans has a special place in our social life. On the grounds of both morality and law, our significant other can expect special treatment. It is understandable that, precisely because of this kind of relationship, we save our significant other instead of others or will not testify against (...) her/him. How as a society should we treat love-like relationships humans with robots? Based on the assumption that robots do not have an inner life and are not moral patients, I defend the thesis that this kind of relationship should be protected by criminal law. (shrink)

Uncontrolled access to information on the Internet has many advantages, but it also leads to the phenomenon of fake news. Fake news is dangerous in many spheres, including that of health. For example, we are facing an increase in the amount of vaccine hesitancy. This has been w considered by the World Health Organization in 2019 as one of the greatest threats to public health. This specific phenomenon is linked with the spread of information on the Internet around that issue. (...) In this paper, I discuss a proposition of new crime, which has the aim of fighting medical fake news by stopping its spread. This proposition should be considered only if other non-criminal measures are inefficient. The proposal is “Whoever publicly disseminates information evidently discrepant with medical knowledge is subject to a penalty.”. (shrink)

Using robots in the military contexts is problematic at many levels. There are social, legal, and ethical issues that should be discussed first before their wider deployment. In this paper, we focus on an additional problem: their human likeness. We claim that military robots should not look like humans. That design choice may bring additional risks that endanger human lives and by that contradicts the very justification for deploying robots at war, which is decreasing human deaths and injuries. We discuss (...) two threats—epistemological and patient. Epistemological one is connected with the risk of mistaking robots for humans due to the limited ways of getting information about the external world, which may be amplified by the rush and need to fight with robots in distance. The patient threat is related to the developing attachment to robots, that in military contexts may cause additional deaths by the hesitance to sacrifice robots in order to save humans in peril or risking human life to save robots. (shrink)

In a recent article, Joshua Shepherd identifies six problems with attributing moral status to nonhumans on the basis of consciousness (Shepherd 2023). In this commentary, I want to draw out yet ano...