Care Robots and Bioethics: A Discussion Paper on Moral Standing of New Training Opportunities

Our life depends more and more on intelligent machines that help us carry out our work or have completely taken our place in tasks which used to be wholly human. This also applies to the field of care and assistance for the sick and fragile: indeed, carebots are increasingly present by the patient’s bed and can collaborate in care work. However carebots are not objects like others that we use in our everyday life: unlike the tools through which we do things, robots have (and will more and more have) some level of autonomy. We intend to consider the type of relationship it is right to build with these devices and ask whether intelligent robots deserve some moral and legal relevance. The robot may be seen as a slave or an entity with which we can form friendships or loving relationships: we will maintain that it is our responsibility to prepare for future scenarios in which increasingly intelligent, autonomous machines will be not mere tools, but significant life companions.