Kindness to Robots: Someday It Will Be a Serious Ethical Issue

“The first thinking machine or anthropoid robot will be far more human-like than any pet dog or workhorse. It will [feel] natural to address such a machine as ‘you’ and unnatural to smash it to bits with a sledgehammer. … [Yet] how could we possibly have moral duties to a robot or a thinking machine any more than we do to a toaster?” (The Jewish sages have an answer.)