Bob Cook <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would note that those kind of people have not gotten around the Atomic > Energy Act in this country very well. > That is because radioactive material is difficult and expensive to produce and easy to detect, and it is produced in only a few facilities. Robots and computers will be mass produced by thousands of corporations worldwide, and they will be impossible to detect. > I would disagree with you that we have no right to keep numbers of items > (robots) down. Such control It is a collective right established by law > that limits the availability of items. > In free nations governments have no right to limit the production or ownership of items that cause no intrinsic harm in normal use. Today's computers can be used for harmful purposes such as hacking and defrauding people. Automobiles can be used as getaway cars by bank robbers. It would be an outrageous violation of rights for any government to limit ownership of computers or automobiles for those reasons. I am sure there would be tremendous opposition to a move to limit robots, and I would be fully supportive of it. The fact that they put people out of work must not be counted against them. Any labor saving device puts people out of work. Any time I buy a Japanese car instead of an American car, I put Americans out of work. That is my right. > The definitions surely need to be established which distinguishes a > computer from a robot. These would be legal definitions in laws and > regulations and may not reflect the hazy lines between this and that which > you suggest are a problem. > The lines are actually hazy. They are nonexistent. There will be dumb peripheral robots such as roving cameras or garden tools with robot interfaces on one side, and on the other, a computer printer might already be considered robots. Asking lawmakers to draw arbitrary lines and to make artificial distinctions is asking for trouble. > My basic assumption is that technology can be regulated by a government > for the good of the society, consistent with the will of the majority. > This is democracy. > I do not think so. I do not know of any inherently safe products that regulated solely for the good of society. Can you think of an example of this? I do not think that would be Constitutional in the U.S. - Jed
