Toward a universal declaration of robot rights? Building robots into global diversity

This chapter connects the robot rights debate with global diversity management discourse. That connection strengthens the claim that robot rights will be more nuanced, fragmented, and varied from country to country compared to human and animal rights. The crucial distinction between robot rights and human and animal rights is that robots do not yet (and may never) possess properties that ground their moral and legal status. All humans are entitled to protection and certain rights simply because they are members of the human species. In the case of animals, sentience and their possibility of feeling pain allow a universalized expectation of unified legal protection. The absence of similar characteristics does not preclude robots from being granted rights; instead, it places the source of potential rights in different rationales. Those non-properties-based approaches may have less conviction power for initiating changes in different cultures, making it improbable for something like a Universal Declaration of Robots Rights to emerge. It is more probable that robot rights will be geographically diverse and culture-dependent.