YASAR UNIVERSITY
ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES SoFL 1102
SAMPLE Fınal EXAM (1)
NAME: _____________________________________ DATE: ______N/A_____
SECTION: ______________ TIME ALLOWED: 120 minutes
You are expected to write an argumentative essay of 500-1000 words on robot rights.
Read the statement and the question below and follow the instructions.
With the emergence and rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, it will be necessary or even vital to give
civil and legal rights that are on par with that of humans to artificial constructs, such as robots. Do you
agree or disagree with this statement?
• Discuss the question in an argumentative essay, using at least three of the six extracts below to
support your points. Do not forget to use in-text citations and write a list of references for the
sources you use.
• Please note that essays that directly quote more than one extract will be scored between 0-24
points (“Poor” column in the rubric).
To consider before you start planning
You may consider the question from a number of different perspectives, such as:
Biological: the distinction between humans and machines / emotions / differentiating a human-like robot
from a robot-like human
Social: robots to fulfil a specific function / interests and desires / make choices, interpret, interact with and
learn about the world / have rudimentary systems of pleasure and emotion / feel pain / autonomously acting
as humans and animals
Psychological/Ethical: grant intelligent and human-like robots extensive rights / the same rights as humans /
self-awareness, consciousness / have free will / be autonomous and form their own decisions / identify right
from wrong
Page 1 of 3
Source Extract 1: Source Extract 2:
These three levels could serve as a road map for designing truly
"First robot able to develop and show emotions is unveiled"
conscious AI. "If you want to make your robots conscious, this
says our standfirst. "Nao, developed by a European research
is what we suggest you think about," Lau told Live Science. team, models the first years of life and can form bonds with
The first is level C0. This level of consciousness refers to the the people he meets." Anyone who's seen or interacted with
unconscious operations that take place in the human brain, such a one-year-old human being might doubt that.
as face and speech recognition, according to the review. The
next level of consciousness, C1, involves the ability to make Nao has no emotions, and so cannot develop any. If you look
decisions after drawing upon a vast repertoire of thoughts and at the video in which it is supposed to be showing them
considering multiple possibilities. In humans and other through a set of postures, they might just as well be miming
primates, the prefrontal cortex of the brain serves as a central the actions of a man getting incompetently dressed while
hub for information processing, where many of the actions half-asleep.
described in C1 consciousness take place. By analyzing the
neural circuits in this part of the brain, scientists could derive There's nothing new in pretending that inanimate objects
the computational principles underlying their operation "and have a life. Children do it all the time with dolls, or even
code them into computers," Lau said. The final level, C2, "action figures" as boys' dolls are called. What is strange is
involves "metacognition," or the ability to monitor one's own that adults should be doing it, and that it should be happening
thoughts and computations — in other words, the ability to be in a culture that calls itself scientific and sceptical. People
self-aware. Level C2 consciousness results in subjective who would point and jeer at the idea of a weeping Madonna
see nothing particularly odd in a video where we pretend that
feelings of certainty or error, which help people realize
a robot has emotions.
mistakes and correct them.
____________________________________
Source information:
__________________________________________
Source information:
Type of the source: Website
Type of the source: Newspaper
Name of Author(s): Charles Q. Choi
Name of Author(s): Andrew Brown
Date of Release: 26 October 2017
Date of Release: 10 August 2010
Title: How Do You Make a Conscious Robot?
Title: Robots don't feel. Why pretend they do?
Website: https://www.livescience.com/60789-how-to-make-a-conscious-
Website:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/
robot.html (paragraph: 5)
andrewbrown/2010/aug/10/robots-emotion-ethics-philosophy
DOI: 10.4453/rifp.2015.0004
Paragraph: 5
Source Extract 3: Source Extract 4:
The line between robots and people will be blurred with smart There may be some similar cognitive states found between
prosthetics and implanted components," predicts Massachusetts human beings and super intelligent humanoid robots, but
Institute of Technology professor Russ Tedrake. "It won't be subjectivity (if we can call it the ‘inner conscious life of
robots and people but robot people." Tedrake says the underlying humanoid robots’) is very different from the human
idea is to combine the best of organic and mechanical systems so consciousness, as Bostrom (2016) pointed out. Humanoid
their advantages outweigh their limitations. He imagines robots robots can have the power of imitation and can follow the
will play a significant role in augmenting or replacing bodily commands that are installed in their software systems without
parts. being guided by any self-understanding. Humanoid robots do
not have any emotion, conscience, rationality or self-
knowledge (privileged access) that can convey any effect to
their moral judgments.
__________________________________________ __________________________________________
Source information: Source information:
Type of the source: Website Type of the source: Journal Article
Name of Author(s): Sharon Gaudin Name of Author(s): Sanjit Chakraborty
Date of Release: 6 June 2014 Date of Release: 2018
Title: Hail cyborgs! The line between robots and humans is blurring Title: Can humanoid robots be moral?
Website: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2490488/hail-cyborgs- Title of the Journal: Ethics in Science and Environmental
the-line-between-robots-and-humans-is-blurring.html Politics (Volume: 18, Page: 53)
Paragraph: 2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/esep00186
Page 2 of 3
Source Extract 5: Source Extract 6:
Paro is perhaps the most interesting, as it is sold as a Responses such as being happy to get a pile of money are tied
“therapeutic robot”, and employed in many elder care in with physiological changes such as heartbeat, breathing
facilities around the world. Paro provides the “documented rate, and levels of hormones such as cortisol. Because robots
benefits of animal therapy”, even if it is not actually an are made of metal and plastic, it is highly unlikely that they
animal. Paro remembers the name people give it, and even will ever have the kinds of inputs from bodies that help to
remembers the actions it did before being petted—trying to determine the experiences that people have, the feelings that
repeat these actions with the goal of behaving “the way the are much more than mere judgments. On the theory that
user prefers.” Stress and loneliness is relieved in the elderly emotions are physiological perceptions, robots will probably
and demented, time is freed for the caretakers, and the family never have human emotions, because they will never have
members’ conscience is a bit clearer when leaving their human bodies. It might be possible to simulate physiological
elders with a smile and a seal on their lap. Win, win, win? inputs, but the complexity of the signals that people get from
__________________________________________ all of their organs makes this unlikely.
Source information: __________________________________________
Source information:
Type of the source: Journal Article
Name of Author(s): Henrik Skaug Sætra Type of the source: Magazine Article
Date of Release: 19 September 2018 Name of Author(s): Paul Thagard
Title: The Ghost in the Machine: Being Human in the Age of AI and Date of Release: 14 December 2017
Machine Learning Title: Will Robots Ever Have Emotions?
Title of the Journal: Human Arenas (Volume: 7, Page: 70) Title of the Magazine: Psychology Today
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-018-0039-1 Website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/
Page 3 of 3
