[Tyler]

Dum inter robots sumus, colamus humanitatem
     

Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem - "as long as we are
humans, let us be humane" - this famous injunction of Roman philosopher
Seneca is one example of a common human feeling that fellow humans
should be cherished. A new paper by Dr. John R. Skoyles argues that the
origin of this feeling is an interpersonal interface based on mirror
neurons that blurs the physical boundaries between ourselves and others
of our own species. Skoyles says, "Natural selection created in us a
brain that can care in a way which no other animal brain can. It did
this because it created a brain that mirrored other individuals."
The result is a feeling of empathy for other creatures that's
proportional to their similarity - very high empathy for other humans,
fairly high empathy for other mammals, less for dissimilar animals, and
still less for plants or inanimate objects. Providing a similar
mechanism for
robots may be essential for complete social interaction with humans.
Perhaps in the future someone will say, "Dum inter robots sumus,
colamus humanitatem". For more, see Skoyles paper, Why our brains
cherish humanity: Mirror neurons and colamus humanitatem (PDF format).
   

http://robots.net/article/2697.html