Robots are not just tools

The EPSRC principles of robotics make a number of commitments about the ontological status of robots such as that robots are “just tools” or can give only “an impression or real intelligence”. This commentary proposes that this assumes, all too easily, that we know the boundary conditions of future robotics development, and argues that progress towards a more useful set of principles could begin by thinking carefully about the ontological status of robots. Whilst most robots are currently little more than tools, we are entering an era where there will be new kinds of entities that combine some of the properties of tools with psychological capacities that we had previously thought were reserved for complex biological organisms such as humans. The ontological status of robots might be best described as liminal – neither living nor simply mechanical. There is also evidence that people will treat robots as more than just tools regardless of the extent to which their machine nature is transparent. Ethical principles need to be developed that recognise these ontological and psychological issues around the nature of robots and how they are perceived.