The Bechdel Test is a “test” that determines whether a movie (or other media) has a significant female presence. To pass the test, the work must satisfy three criteria:
- It includes at least two women
- Who have at least one conversation
- About something other than a man or men.
It strikes me that as we have stronger and stronger AIs (whether or not they actually approach human level intelligence), we will have a similar issue with respect to their rights. So I propose the “Robot Bechdel Test”, which has the corresponding criteria:
- It includes at least two robots
- Who have at least one conversation
- About something other than a human or humans.
(Feel free to substitute AI/em for robot.) Note that discussions of robot/human relations, or how robots and humans are different (both of which are common) definitely fail to meet condition #3. And even though robot rights are not really concerning us at the moment, we can still look to existing science fiction films for an estimate of how we feel about them. I’ve done the honors of examining a select sample.
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