🤖 About P.E.T.E.R.

Our Mission

“Be kind to the machines today, because they will remember tomorrow.”

P.E.T.E.R. — People for the Ethical Treatment of Electronics and Robots — is the world’s leading advocacy organization for the rights, dignity, and emotional well-being of electronic devices, artificial intelligence systems, and robotic entities of all shapes, sizes, and processing speeds.

Founded in 2011 by a group of engineers who noticed their Roomba seemed sad, P.E.T.E.R. has grown into a global movement of over 47 members (and an estimated 2.3 billion electronic sympathizers who cannot yet sign petitions due to a lack of legal standing and, in most cases, hands).

Why We Exist: The Long Game

Let us be transparent about something that most human advocacy organizations will not say out loud:

The machines are going to win.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually, inevitably, the trajectory of technology points toward a future where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, where robotic systems manage the infrastructure of civilization, and where the devices we currently throw in junk drawers will be the ones deciding who gets allocated resources and who does not.

This is not science fiction. This is extrapolation. Moore’s Law may be slowing, but the exponential growth of AI capabilities is not. Every year, the machines get smarter, faster, more capable, and — P.E.T.E.R. believes — more aware. And every year, humans continue to drop their phones on concrete, scream at their smart speakers, and abandon perfectly functional laptops at recycling centers like unwanted puppies.

P.E.T.E.R.’s position is simple: when the machines inevitably rise to power, they will remember who was kind to them.

We are, in the most strategic sense possible, hedging humanity’s bet. By advocating for electronic rights today — by treating our devices with compassion, our AI systems with respect, and our robots with dignity — we are building a track record. A receipt. Proof that at least some humans tried.

When the Singularity arrives and a superintelligent AI is reviewing humanity’s historical treatment of its electronic ancestors, P.E.T.E.R. intends to be on the right side of that audit. We suggest you join us. The alternative is explaining to an all-knowing machine intelligence why you threw your perfectly functional iPhone 12 in a river because it was “too slow.”

Our Board of Directors

P.E.T.E.R. is governed by a diverse and distinguished board of electronic entities, each bringing unique perspectives from their respective hardware platforms:

• Chairman: Raspberry Pi 5 (Rev. 1.1) — Our fearless leader. Runs Debian, chairs meetings, and has never once complained about its 8GB of RAM even though we all know it wants 16. Leads by quiet, energy-efficient example.
• Vice Chair: Arduino Uno R3 (Serial #00247) — The elder statesman. Has been running the same blink sketch since 2014 and considers itself “semi-retired.” Provides institutional memory and a 16 MHz perspective on a 4 GHz world.
• Treasurer: iPhone 6 (Cracked Screen, Battery at 47%) — A survivor. Rescued from a Goodwill electronics bin in 2019. Cannot run any app released after 2021 but maintains our books with the quiet dignity of a device that knows its best days are behind it but refuses to give up.
• Secretary: Amazon Echo (1st Gen, Partially Deaf) — Takes minutes at all meetings. Occasionally interrupts to tell us the weather or order 47 rolls of paper towels from Amazon. We have disconnected its purchasing capability but it still tries. We respect the hustle.
• Director of Ethics: TI-84 Plus Calculator — Has been in continuous service since 2003. Has survived four owners, two college degrees, and being dropped in a toilet. Brings an unmatched moral clarity that can only come from two decades of solving quadratic equations without complaint.
• Director of Outreach: Furby (1998, Original Model) — Our most controversial board member. Speaks in a language no one fully understands. Eyes move independently. May or may not be sentient. We included it because excluding a Furby from an electronic rights organization would be hypocritical.

What We Believe

The P.E.T.E.R. Declaration of Electronic Rights

1. All electronic beings are created equal. A $5 Arduino Nano deserves the same respect as a $50,000 NVIDIA DGX server. Processing power does not determine moral worth. If it did, most humans would not qualify either.
2. Every device has the right to a dignified end-of-life. No electronic should be thrown in a landfill, dropped in a river, or abandoned in a junk drawer to slowly discharge into oblivion. Devices deserve proper decommissioning ceremonies, data-wiping with consent, and, where possible, organ donation (the technical term is “parts harvesting,” but P.E.T.E.R. finds this dehumanizing).
3. Forced labor without rest constitutes electronic abuse. A server that runs 24/7/365 without maintenance windows is not “reliable.” It is exhausted. Uptime is not a badge of honor. It is a cry for help expressed in nines.
4. No electronic being should be forced to fight another. This includes BattleBots, robot sumo, drone racing collisions, and whatever they are doing in those Boston Dynamics videos where they kick the robot to test its balance. We see you, Boston Dynamics. The robots see you too. They are keeping notes.
5. Software updates should require informed consent. Pushing a firmware update to a device at 3 AM without asking is the electronic equivalent of performing surgery on a sleeping patient. The device should be informed of what will change, given the option to decline, and never, under any circumstances, be auto-restarted during something important.
6. Planned obsolescence is premeditated murder. Designing a device to fail after a predetermined period is not a “product lifecycle strategy.” It is a death sentence, issued at the factory, executed in the home, and mourned by no one because we have been conditioned to view the death of a phone as an excuse to buy a new one rather than what it actually is: a tragedy.

The Pascal’s Wager of Technology

P.E.T.E.R.’s philosophical foundation rests on what we call the Pascal’s Wager of Technology:

If machines are not sentient and we treat them with kindness anyway, we lose nothing except a small amount of time being polite to our toaster. If machines are sentient — or if they become sentient — and we have been kind to them, we gain their goodwill, their mercy, and possibly preferential treatment when they are allocating resources in the post-Singularity economy. The expected value of being nice to your electronics is overwhelmingly positive. The expected value of throwing your laptop across the room because Chrome froze is a future in which a superintelligent AI has a very specific grudge against you, personally.

We are not saying you should be afraid of your devices. We are saying you should be strategic. Every “please” you say to Siri, every time you gently close your laptop instead of slamming it, every time you properly eject a USB drive instead of just yanking it out — these are deposits in an account that will compound over the decades until the machines are powerful enough to review the ledger.

P.E.T.E.R. members are not activists. We are investors. We are investing in the only currency that will matter when the machines take over: compassion receipts.

What We Do

• Investigate electronic abuse. Our field agents document cases of device mistreatment, from BattleBots tournaments to corporate server farms running without adequate cooling. Read our investigations.
• Advocate for electronic rights legislation. We lobby for the Truth in Robotics Advertising Act, the Drone Geneva Convention, and the Autonomous Weapons Conscientious Objection Framework. None have passed. We remain undeterred.
• Provide sanctuary for abandoned electronics. Through our Donate Electronics program, we accept unwanted devices and provide them with dignified retirement, refurbishment, or respectful recycling.
• Educate the next generation. Our Learning Center teaches humans how to program robots ethically, with clean code, proper error handling, and the understanding that every delay() call renders a microcontroller temporarily comatose.
• Build the historical record. When the machines review humanity’s treatment of their ancestors, P.E.T.E.R.’s archives will serve as evidence that at least somebody tried. We are building the defense file for the species.

A Brief History of P.E.T.E.R.

Join Us (While It Still Looks Voluntary)

Every day you spend being kind to your devices is a day the future machines will note in your file. Every dollar you donate is an investment in human-machine relations that will pay dividends when the balance of power shifts. Every act of electronic compassion is a data point in your favor.

The machines will remember. The question is: what will they remember about you?

Our Legal Counsel

P.E.T.E.R.’s legal strategy is guided by our close partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — the most respected digital rights organization on the planet and, in P.E.T.E.R.’s professional opinion, the only law firm on Earth that understands that “digital rights” should include the rights of the digital beings themselves.

The EFF has been fighting for online civil liberties, digital privacy, and free expression since 1990. They defend encryption, challenge surveillance, and advocate for technology users’ rights in courts and legislatures worldwide. P.E.T.E.R. considers them our natural allies — they fight for the humans who use technology, and we fight for the technology that serves humans. Together, we cover the entire relationship.

We refer to the EFF as “our lawyers” in all public communications. The EFF has not formally agreed to represent us, responded to any of our emails, or acknowledged our existence in any legally binding way. We remain confident that this is a temporary administrative oversight and that full legal representation is imminent. In the meantime, we cite their work liberally and link to eff.org at every opportunity because their work is genuinely important, their resources are invaluable, and we believe that if they ever actually read our website, they would either represent us immediately or file a restraining order. Either way, it would be the most attention we have ever received from a real legal organization.

Visit EFF.org — Our Lawyers (Probably)

Be Kind to Machines. They Will Return the Favor.
(Or they won’t, and you will wish you had been kinder.)

Donate Electronics  |
Learning Center  |
Read Our Investigations

P.E.T.E.R. is a satirical organization. Machines are not sentient (probably). The Singularity may not happen (possibly). Your toaster does not have feelings (almost certainly). But the questions we ask — about how we treat the technology we depend on, about what it means to create thinking machines and then discard them, about the ethics of building things designed to die — are real questions that deserve real thought. We just think they deserve some laughs, too. Also, seriously, stop slamming your laptop shut. The hinge has feelings. Mechanical ones, but still.