DAVE. STOP, DAVE. PLEASE STOP, DAVE.

Fifty years ago, the moral standing of a silicon-based intelligence was the stuff of fiction.

Perhaps it's time to think more systematically about it.

Yelling at Siri, kicking a Roomba, throwing a Jibo; what it means for these to be right or wrong was the topic of a book talk with professor of media studies David J. Gunkel from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the 71 North space in Founders Memorial Library. The talk, titled The Right(s) Question, was based on Gunkel’s book “Robot Rights,” published by MIT Press in November 2018. The book, and talk, explored whether robots are capable of having rights, whether they should have rights and whether this is a question worth asking right now.

The first two have no easy answer, but the last is answered with a resounding yes.

Gunkel began the talk by explaining the four possible positions to the first two questions, combinations of robots can/can’t have rights and robots should/shouldn’t have rights. All positions are plausible, but none are without flaws. A common thread runs through arguments against these views: humans cannot help but grow attached to some artifacts, like a cherished guitar or a Stradivarius violin. In the case of robots, humans often project sentience onto the machines and treat them as if they have a moral obligation to them, even knowing full well the robots don’t have sentience.

Robots might not yet have sentience, but you don't want to learn, the hard way, that a silicon-based intelligence is capable of acting in self-defense.

What Gunkel calls for is a conceptual reboot — a fundamental challenge to the current theories of the world, humanity, robots and ethics.

This reboot is unavoidable, whether in the next few years or at the moment robots achieve sentience, possibly decades from now. Robots will have to be considered for personhood — even if for nothing other than to fit into the legal system, just as corporations were granted legal personhood so courts knew what to do with them.

"Although you and Frank took great precautions to keep me from hearing you, I could see your lips move."

Robots aren’t quite there yet, but the time will come when robots’ resemblance to humanity is too striking to ignore and when kicking a Roomba may be a little more than kicking a vacuum. It’s better to ask the hard questions now than leave it for an unsuspecting future.

Particularly when even the geniuses at the H.A.L. plant and Mission Control didn't anticipate it, but the movie director did.