While the notion of punishing machines for misdeeds has received some attention in science fiction, it seems worthwhile to take a brief philosophical look at this matter. This is because the future, or so some rather smart people claim, will see the rise of intelligent machine, machines that do things that would be misdeeds or crimes if committed by a human.
In general, punishment is aimed at one or more of these goals: retribution, rehabilitation, or deterrence. Each will be considered in turn in the context of machines.
Roughly put, punishment for the purpose of retribution is aimed at paying an agent back for wrongdoing. This can be seen as a form of balancing the books: the punishment inflicted on the agent is supposed to pay the debt it incurred by its wrongdoing. Reparation can, to be a bit sloppy, be included under retaliation, at least in the sense of the repayment of a debt incurred by the commission of a misdeed.
While a machine can be damaged or destroyed, there is the question about whether it can be the target of retribution. After all, while a human might kick her car for breaking down or smash his can opener for cutting his finger, it would be odd to consider this retributive punishment. This is because retribution requires that a wrong has been done by an agent, which is different from the mere infliction of harm. Intuitively, a piece of glass can cut your foot, but it cannot wrong you.
If a machine can be an agent, which was discussed in an earlier essay, then it could do wrong and be a target for retribution. However, even if a machine had agency, there is still the question of whether retribution would apply. After all, retribution requires more than just agency on the part of the target. It also requires that the target can suffer from the payback. On the face of it, a machine that could not suffer would not be subject to retribution as retribution is based on doing a “righteous wrong” to the target. To illustrate, suppose that an android injured a human, costing him his left eye. In retribution, the android’s left eye is removed. But the android does not suffer as it does not feel any pain and is not bothered by the removal of its eye. As such, the retribution would be pointless, and the books would not be balanced.
This could be countered by arguing that the target of the retribution need not suffer as what is required is the right sort of balancing of books, so to speak. So, in the android case, removal of the android’s eye would suffice, even if the android did not suffer. This does have some appeal since retribution against humans does not always require that the human suffer. For example, a human might break another human’s iPad and have her iPad broken in turn but not care at all. The requirements of retribution would seem to have been met, despite the lack of suffering.
Punishment for rehabilitation is intended to transform wrongdoers so that they will no longer be inclined to engage in the wrongful behavior that incurred the punishment. This differs from punishment aimed at deterrence as this aims at providing the target with a reason to not engage in the misdeed in the future. Rehabilitation is also aimed at the agent who did the misdeed, whereas punishment for the sake of deterrence is usually intended to affect others as well.
Obviously, a machine that lacks agency cannot be subject to rehabilitative punishment as it cannot “earn” such punishment by its misdeeds and, presumably, cannot have its behavioral inclinations corrected by such punishment.
To use an obvious example, if your computer crashes and you lose hours of work, punishing the computer to rehabilitate it would be pointless. Not being an agent, it did not “earn” the punishment and punishment will not incline it to crash less in the future.
A machine that possesses agency could “earn” punishment by its misdeeds. It also seems possible to imagine a machine that could be rehabilitated by punishment. For example, one could imagine a robot dog that could be trained in the same way as a real dog. After leaking oil in the house or biting the robo-cat and being scolded, it could learn not to do those misdeeds again.
It could be argued that it would be better, both morally and practically, to build machines that would learn without punishment or to teach them without punishing them. After all, though organic beings seem wired in a way that requires we be trained with pleasure and pain (as Aristotle would argue), there might be no reason that our creations must work the same way. But, perhaps, it is not just a matter of organic, perhaps intelligence and agency require the capacity for pleasure and pain. Or perhaps not. Or it might simply be the only way that we know how to teach. We will be, by our nature, cruel teachers of our machine children.
Then again, we might be inclined to regard a machine that does misdeeds as being defective and in need of repair rather than punishment. If so, such machines would be “refurbished” or reprogrammed rather than rehabilitated by punishment. There are those who think the same of human beings and this raises the same issues about how agents should be treated.
The purpose of deterrence is to motivate the agent who did the misdeed or other agents not to commit that deed. In the case of humans, people argue in favor of capital punishment because of its alleged deterrence value: if the state kills people for certain crimes, people are less likely to commit those crimes.
As with other forms of punishment, deterrence requires agency: the punished target must merit the punishment, and the other targets must be capable of changing their actions in response to that punishment.
Deterrence, obviously enough, does not work in regard to non-agents. For example, if a computer crashes and wipes out a file a person has been laboring on for hours, punishing it will not deter it. Smashing it in front of other computers will not deter them.
A machine that had agency could “earn” such punishment by its misdeeds and could, in theory, be deterred. The punishment could also deter other machines. For example, imagine a combat robot that performed poorly in its mission (or showed robo-cowardice). Punishing it could deter it from doing that again, it could serve as a warning, and thus a deterrence, to other combat robots.
Punishment for the sake of deterrence raises the same sort of issues as punishment aimed at rehabilitation, such as the notion that it might be preferable to repair machines that engage in misdeeds rather than punishing them. The main differences are, of course, that deterrence is not aimed at making the target inclined to behave well, just to disincline it from behaving badly and that deterrence is also aimed at those who have not committed the misdeed.