Power to the Robots: Power to the Robots, Right On!
We have yet to ensure equal rights for humans, some demand "rights" for animals, and now we have a group dedicated to ensuring equal rights for robots--when they exist, that is. What rights would those be? After all, robots would not be alive:
Existence, Independence, and the Pursuit of Greater Cognition... Should robots reach the level of self-awareness and show genuine intelligence, we must be prepared to treat them as sentient beings, and respect their desires, wants, and needs as we respect those things in our human society. Failure to recognize and grant these rights to non-human artificial intelligences would be a crime on the order of the 19th Century's failure to recognize the humanity and attendant rights of people of African descent. Outward differences in appearances should in no way affect our ethical treatment of self-aware, intelligent beings.How about we just don't create machines that would appear to have such traits?
This may be a put-on, but I doubt it. Some people are obsessed about granting human moral status to a wide assortment of non human entities. With this as a growing mindset, why not include inanimate objects?
Labels: Robot Rights
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:09 PM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
Are we alive? The human brain and body after all is built on the backs of molecular machines. If the mind of an ant was copied onto silicon would it still be alive? A mouse? A chimpanzee? A human? would their copy retain their value? The question is not "is it alive?" but rather is intelligence on silicon equal to that built on carbon. I think it is, but "is it alive?" is something that can only be answered in the beholders eye. There
is no way to stop the progress towards AI. If we took the impossible step to ban it here it will move elsewhere. The dangers or moral issues have
never been a hindrance in the drive for power and knowledge. In 1944 there was an outcry from the scientific community that
igniting the hydrogen bomb would burn out the atmosphere, and we pressed the button anyway. And we are soon going to press it again, we can only hope that we are as lucky then as in 1944.
We're not flotsam and jetsam floating on the water. We make decisions. We don't *have* to do anything. We just don't want any limitations, and we no longer believe in reasonable self restraing, and that will be our downfall if we are not careful.
Thanks for dropping by columbian_leaf.
"Some people are obsessed about granting human moral status to a wide assortment of non human entities."
So Wesley, would you be against cruelty against animal laws? For after all, those laws give animals a legal status (protection from battery) that has traditionally been the sole privilege of humans.
ps - I ordered Forced Exit.
Royale: Thanks for ordering the book.
As I think you know, I perceive a duty to treat animals humanely an important component of human exceptionalism, but oppose granting them "rights." Robots would be machines we programmed and AI would still be programming in a machine.
Wouldn't it be humane to give rights to another conscience being, whether it is a robot (should it exist) or a chimpanzee?
No. Only humans should have rights, along with which come duties. No animal anywhere could exercise a right and no animal anywhere can be said to owe any duties. Robots would be machines. AI, as in DATA on Star Trek would be a fiction, it seems to me. It would just be programming that was programmed to increase programming independently of human input.
Are you saying that rights are dependent on duties, or one's ability to perform such duties?
If so, what about rights for frozen embryos or comatose people? As they are uncapable of performing duties.
By this logic, I think chimpanzees should receive more rights than embryos.
As we've talked about before, human rights are species oriented, not individually earned, or there can be no universal human rights.
This is the topic of your next book, right?
Thanks for asking. Animal rights is the topic of the next book. I am beginning to think about a book that would be more generally about human exceptionalism.
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