"Be Right Back", one of the surprisingly cheerier and happier ending episodes of Black Mirror, brings to light the concept of robot rights. For us in 2017, this concept might seem a little irrelevant as it seems ridiculous to us that a machine would have emotions and the capacity to suffer; however, only a few decades ago, animals were widely thought to be incapable of suffering as well. In fact, as a form of comparison, it is easier for us to imagine an entirely sentient machine within our lifetime as quantum computers emerge into the mainstream and we carry early prototypes of artificial intelligence in our moderately low power phones (Siri/Google assist), than it was for the humans of 1901 who's earth had never even seen the existence of an airplane and thought it unimaginable for a person to stay in the air against gravity, only to see man land on the moon in their own lifetime less than 70 years later. Our mainstream computers will no longer be binary, a 0 or a 1 to transfer streams of information, but will run on complex and moving characters with varying values. An analogy for this is that mainstream binary computers for which we know emotion is impossible are like a note
in an envelope, with each letter making up words which makes sense together and transfer a message; quantum computers is like a note in an email in which every letter has a link to an entire note. Being able to fit the entire note in the envelope into a single letter of the email is an example of how much more powerful the new computers could be. In short, we are robots ourselves with quantum computing and poor casing that deteriorates dramatically over time. Our emotions and thoughts and innovations are all a result of chemicals with information and electrical impulses interacting with the brain and its transmitters. Whether robot rights should be a concern as we still struggle with basic rights for some humans is another question with various moral angles and topics of self preservation, but whether it will be possible and whether legislation will actually be debated is answered by when.