I couldn’t help but wonder: Is it wrong to hit a drone with a tennis ball?
I decided to ask an expert. I contacted Dr. Kate Darling, robot ethicist at the MIT Media Lab, and asked her if it’s wrong to hit tennis balls at a drone for fun.
She said: “The drone won’t care, but other people might”. She pointed out that while our robots obviously don’t have feelings, we humans do. “We tend to treat robots like they’re alive, even though we know they’re just machines. So you might want to think twice about violence towards robots as their design gets more lifelike; it could start to make people uncomfortable.”
That made sense, but on the other hand, should we really be making ourselves so vulnerable?
“If you’re trying to punish the robot,” she said, “you’re barking up the wrong tree”.
She has a point. It’s not the robots we need to worry about, it’s the people controlling them.
If you want to bring down a drone, perhaps you should consider a different target.