Can robots commit 'suicide’, and do they have rights?

livemint.com:

first robot "suicide", according to the Daily Mail. The response isn't surprising since South Korea loves its robots, and boasts of highest robot density globally with one industrial robot for every 10 employees, according to the International Federation of Robotics. While the exact cause of the incident is still under investigation, some officials say it could have been caused by a navigational error, sensor failure, or even a programming bug.

The robot's manufacturer is analyzing the collected parts, and we must be patient. One may recall that in April, The Associated Press (AP) concluded that the robot which collapsed while stacking boxes wasn't using its AI-enabled judgment to deactivate itself but fell a couple of times during more than 20 hours of demonstrations over four days. According to the AP report, even Agility Robotics, the company that manufactured it, confirmed the same.

The video, incidentally, began as a joke, but as with Chinese whispers, it took a life of its own and developed into a sentient robot killing itself. Regardless of how one views the South Korea robot incident, science fiction cinema has long explored the concept of falling in love with robots, and giving them rights. Almost 25 years ago, the late Robin Williams starred in Bicentennial Man as an NDR-114 robot, which got periodic bio upgrades, was provided with rights to earn wages, and eventually declared the oldest living human by the courts before he died.

That remains science fiction. In 2010, Rajnikanth-starrer Enthiran (Robot) gave a glimpse into the life of ‘Chitti’--an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered humanoid robot that could fight, jump from one train to the other, clean, cook, and even fall in love. In other words, Chitti was