South Korea is actually holding a conference whose purpose is to develop laws to ensure that humans do not abuse robots, and vice-versa. They are calling it the Robot Ethics Charter.

I think it’s a little odd, since there are no self-aware or sentient robots, yet. But it’s very novel that a government is choosing to make official laws governing things like robot ethics. Even though the Asimov robot laws were mainly intended for the robot itself, the South Korean laws seem mainly for the human facet.

“Imagine if some people treat androids as if the machines were their wives,” Park Hye-Young of the ministry’s robot team told the AFP news agency.

“Others may get addicted to interacting with them just as many internet users get hooked to the cyberworld.”

Maybe they were frightened by the upsurge in sexy robots, or possibly the emergence of robots that think humans taste like bacon.

Even more likely: they watch too much Battlestar Galactica.