Should A.I. ever be granted rights?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anthony_A
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Anthony_A

Guest
Hey guys, I’m a new member here. I am a junior philosophy major. My main interests in philosophy are mind, metaphysics, and religion (in that particular order as of now). Today, for the first time, I watched the movie “Artificial Intelligence” and it brought some issues to mind. (Having seen the movie will not be necessary to answer this question)

If and when A.I. reaches a sufficient level of sophistication (whatever it may be) should “it” be given a certain amount of rights? For instance, should A.I. be given the right to live its life with protection from either the government or general moral conscience that it is wrong to murder (take the life, or whatever term) that A.I.?

This should not be seen as a question of whether or not x level of sophistication entails personhood. What raised this question for me is the fact that we generally agree that it is wrong for someone to kill a dog out of anger or even for the “fun” of it. The same principle applies to a wide range of semi-intelligent animals. So, if we were to create a “robot” that was just comparable to human intelligence (change “human” to “animal” if the scenario offends you) should it be given a certain amount of rights? If so, which rights?
 
Anthony_A said:
Hey guys, I’m a new member here. I am a junior philosophy major. My main interests in philosophy are mind, metaphysics, and religion (in that particular order as of now). Today, for the first time, I watched the movie “Artificial Intelligence” and it brought some issues to mind. (Having seen the movie will not be necessary to answer this question)

If and when A.I. reaches a sufficient level of sophistication (whatever it may be) should “it” be given a certain amount of rights? For instance, should A.I. be given the right to live its life with protection from either the government or general moral conscience that it is wrong to murder (take the life, or whatever term) that A.I.?

This should not be seen as a question of whether or not x level of sophistication entails personhood. What raised this question for me is the fact that we generally agree that it is wrong for someone to kill a dog out of anger or even for the “fun” of it. The same principle applies to a wide range of semi-intelligent animals. So, if we were to create a “robot” that was just comparable to human intelligence (change “human” to “animal” if the scenario offends you) should it be given a certain amount of rights? If so, which rights?
Click to expand...

Tin cans & electrodes have no rights: no matter how sophisticated, a machine is a machine, nothing more.​

If anything, it seems that human beings are being treated as machines: the “harvesting” of “spare parts” from embryos treats them as objects, to be produced to order, and thrown away in the rubbish if (or when) unwanted. This is barbarism beyond that of the ancient Greeks & Romans, who merely exposed unwanted children. But the higher a culture is to begin with, the lower it can fall 😦 Part of the trouble seems to be that the prominence of the sciences is not balanced or held in check by a corresponding prominence of the arts: these too have been degraded 😦
 
There is no such thing as A. I. so this discussion is interesting, but useless.

God is Truth and He graciously gave us the ability to understand simplistic concepts and the freedom to choose our actions, because He loves us.

No machine or man made item has a soul, so no matter how far we go, A. I. is not human life.

We are called to love and to be compassionate to all of God’s creations!

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

mark
 
I should intervene before this goes any further off track. Please note that I stated this is not an issue of whether or not a robot with A.I. is a person. That issue is for another time and another thread.

As for the whole soul business, why couldn’t an A.I. object have an A.I. soul? Aquinas thought that all living things had a soul based on the matter + form. Again, I’m not trying to say that an A.I. object would have a human soul, rather a an immaterial component - even if only epiphenomenal.

A dog is just an animal - just more sophisticated than, say, a rat. In the case of either a dog or a rat wouldn’t our moral conscience say it wrong to murder/torture either one (barring cases where another life is danger or other warranted reasons)?
 
Mark77,

Could you please produce scientific/scholarly evidence that would support such a bold claim as “there is no such thing as A.I.”? Your own knock-down argument would suffice as well if you have one.
 
Anthony_A said:
I should intervene before this goes any further off track. Please note that I stated this is not an issue of whether or not a robot with A.I. is a person. That issue is for another time and another thread.

As for the whole soul business, why couldn’t an A.I. object have an A.I. soul? Aquinas thought that all living things had a soul based on the matter + form. Again, I’m not trying to say that an A.I. object would have a human soul, rather a an immaterial component - even if only epiphenomenal.

A dog is just an animal - just more sophisticated than, say, a rat. In the case of either a dog or a rat wouldn’t our moral conscience say it wrong to murder/torture either one (barring cases where another life is danger or other warranted reasons)?
Click to expand...
The virtue ethicist would answer, I think, that torture is vicious primarily because of what it does to the torturer, not to the tortured, in this case. It is truly inhumane to torture, because it perverts the very nature of the one who does it. Does not Socrates say that it is better to suffer evil than to will it?

I think you are mixing and matching two arguments.

In your opening post you said this:
What raised this question for me is the fact that we generally agree that it is wrong for someone to kill a dog out of anger or even for the “fun” of it. The same principle applies to a wide range of semi-intelligent animals. So, if we were to create a “robot” that was just comparable to human intelligence (change “human” to “animal” if the scenario offends you) should it be given a certain amount of rights? If so, which rights?
Click to expand...
Or rather, mixing and matching two criteria. One criterion is that of sentience. Animals which are more biologically complex are more sentience, they feel pain more. Another criterion is intelligence.

Let it be said that we do not really shirk from hurting dogs because they are intelligent, but rather because they are sentient… and especially because we anthropomorphize their suffering.

Usually the question of intelligence comes up more with some monkeys, dolphins and even pigs.

What would be especially odd would be to have a machine, a physical object, which was intelligent but not at all sentient.

My hunch-- and I’m not sure that I have good reasoning for this-- is that there is no “what it’s like” for machines, and that there cannot be. Sentience, alas, would then forever be truly off limits for robots, even if it could be simulated. The machine could indeed respond to stimuli, but I don’t think it would ever “feel” pain. But if this is the case, then we wouldn’t even have the reason to avoid killing robots that we have to avoid killing dogs…

As for the question of intelligence, I suspect that machines think as instruments and not as agents. If that is the case, then it is no more immoral to smash a super-intelligent machine than a modern robot, than it would be to smash a Macbook as compared to an abacus.
 
There are artifically intellegent agents that work for the telephone comapny in Baltimore, MD. A friend of mine worked in the development of their very human like voices.

If you have trouble with your phone service in Baltimore, and call in about repairs, you get connected to an artifically intellegent agent who keeps you on the phone for quite a while asking you questions in order to analyze the problem. This system does a very good job of recognizing your spoken responses to the expert questions.

However, to give a system like this human rights, could only be an attempt at comitting criminal activity by the phone company…
 
No. It would contain simulation programs. Even if it could mimic human behavior perfectly, it is only a device. Even if it could solve problems, it is still a device. Even if I could have a conversation with a perfectly human looking replica, that is all it is. It would have no goals or desires except those programmed into it.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
No. It would contain simulation programs. Even if it could mimic human behavior perfectly, it is only a device. Even if it could solve problems, it is still a device. Even if I could have a conversation with a perfectly human looking replica, that is all it is. It would have no goals or desires except those programmed into it.
Click to expand...
The telephone company is using connection machines to produce these simulated intellegence operators.
 
RobNY,

Good point on clarifying the difference between an animal that is intelligent and an animal that is sentient. I didn’t make this distinction, yet I do think it was more or less implied. To clarify, we generally regard computers and robots as “intelligent” and we even classify certain phones as “smart”. The whole uniqueness of A.I. is the prospect of it achieving human, or near human results (including intelligence, sentience, volition, etc). Never the less, important distinction.

Although, consider cases where a person is brain dead. No consciousness, no sense perception, etc. As that person lays on a bed, wouldn’t we still say it is wrong to take that person’s life against their (or kins) will? And wouldn’t we agree that it would be wrong to abuse this person? To avoid questions of person hood, replace person with dog.

Your second to last paragraph brings up a good objection that many philosophers have against A.I. - that they will never be able to process qualia (the qualitative, “what it’s like” experience). For a while I arguing this point on campus quite a bit, but I’m reassessing my position as of late. I’m particularly influenced by David Chalmers’ book “The Conscious Mind” in which he argues for what he calls “natural dualism”.

This theory says that consciousness is not a logical necessity of a complex neural system because he constructs an argument for philosophical zombies (creatures that are physically identical to us, yet lack consciousness and thus qualitative experiences). Though, he says, it is a natural (contingent) fact of the world that when we have a sufficiently complex neural system (the brain) that consciousness arises. Therefore he comes to his “natural dualism” conclusion.

Later in his book he argues that if A.I. had a comparable complex functional device like the brain we should expect for the robot to actually have consciousness and experience qualia. We generally agree that a dog has a conscious experience of the world, so why wouldn’t A.I. be able to?

Again, to really stress this point, I don’t want to suggest that A.I. would be having a human experience of the world - a dog is conscious but doesn’t have a human experience either. And I’m not necessarily asking if A.I. should be given the full range of human rights rather some basic set of rights.
 
Anthony_A said:
And I’m not necessarily asking if A.I. should be given the full range of human rights rather some basic set of rights.
Click to expand...
Why is a machine a moral agent? Does a machine actually hold any responsiblity for what it does or is it only being used by a moral agent? Why does a machine need rights, what purpose would that serve for the machine or society?
 
geometer said:
Why is a machine a moral agent? Does a machine actually hold any responsiblity for what it does or is it only being used by a moral agent? Why does a machine need rights, what purpose would that serve for the machine or society?
Click to expand...
If it got to the point of the A.I. depicted in sci-fi movies, and a machine could differentiate between right and wrong, then I think it becomes a moral agent. It’s the burden of knowledge that comes with responsibility.

As for why it needs rights? At this point I’ll plead ignorance of ethical theories (ethics just isn’t an area of research interest for me) and say this is more of a intuition driven point. I think we all have a soft spot for creatures with consciousness (domesticated animals) and if A.I. could reach consciousness, rational decision making, etc then it would be fair to give it, at least, minimal rights like the right to life.
 
Again, why would it be any different to a computer? I suppose you wouldn’t want to dismantle it if you had spent a lot of time on it. But you could also create Frankenstein’s monster. You can’t give a machine or a man made creation a soul or the same life force as God’s creation. So it would not be equal to us. Giving machines rights and power could create a technocracy. Have you ever seen the film Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard? I’d recommend it.
 
I have not been arguing that AI would be equal to us. I think I’ve said that in every one of my posts. My point, again, is that when a thing has consciousness we tend to value that thing. I think, especially if/when AI gets to the point of consciousness, which I see no reason why it would not in the future, we need to treat AI with the same moral respect that we treat each other with (or at least say we do).
 
“Intelligence” can be an ambiguous word. In the important sense, it means the intrinsic ability to understand abstract concepts. Aquinas and Aristotle argues that such a thing can only be accomplished by a being with an immaterial nature (at at least, for humans, partly immaterial nature … involves the soul). Since abstract thoughts are immaterial, material things cannot grasp them. Computers, of course, are strictly material things, and thus cannot be able of abstract thought. Thus, they do not have intelligence (i.e. in the important sense of the word).

Moral decisions require abstract thought, because in order to chose right and wrong, you have to understand right and wrong, and such an understanding is of course, immaterial.

“Intelligence” can also have the definition … reacting to something in a complex and useful way (or something). Such things often do not require abstract thought. Oftentimes, such “intelligence” is just being trained (or programmed) to follow a set of instructions, without the need to understand abstractly what is going on. I was surprised to learn that advanced A.I. Computer scientists, no matter what their religion, often agree about this. When you type stuff into the computer, it takes that (name removed by moderator)uted data, puts it through a pre-made set of functions, and spits out some output data. There is no instance where the computer has any idea what’s going on, or understands the bigger picture or anything like that. It can have memory (i.e. stored data) but it doesn’t understand that data abstractly.

So, since rights only should be given to creatures that are truly intelligent (in the important sense of the word), computers should not be given rights. I am against animal rights, for this reason, even though it can be immorally to kill animals for it could disorder a person’s soul, as one may be taking pleasure from depriving a creature of life (something that spills over to behavior among humans in a very bad way). Also, if someone else owns an animal (or computer for that matter), it would be illegal for you to destroy it … not because the animal or machine has rights, but the owner has rights.

I hope this answers some questions.
 
Anthony_A said:
Hey guys, I’m a new member here. I am a junior philosophy major. My main interests in philosophy are mind, metaphysics, and religion (in that particular order as of now). Today, for the first time, I watched the movie “Artificial Intelligence” and it brought some issues to mind. (Having seen the movie will not be necessary to answer this question)

If and when A.I. reaches a sufficient level of sophistication (whatever it may be) should “it” be given a certain amount of rights? For instance, should A.I. be given the right to live its life with protection from either the government or general moral conscience that it is wrong to murder (take the life, or whatever term) that A.I.?

This should not be seen as a question of whether or not x level of sophistication entails personhood. What raised this question for me is the fact that we generally agree that it is wrong for someone to kill a dog out of anger or even for the “fun” of it. The same principle applies to a wide range of semi-intelligent animals. So, if we were to create a “robot” that was just comparable to human intelligence (change “human” to “animal” if the scenario offends you) should it be given a certain amount of rights? If so, which rights?
Click to expand...
The A.I.'s themselves would not deserve any rights, though one would not be able to damage an A.I., not because they would be equated to animals and thus it would count as animal cruelty, but it is assumed they would belong to someone and thus to hurt them would be to damage property.
 
We’ve explored the idea of artificially created beings and their soul-status (and basic rights) in two of our anthologies:

Infinite Space, Infinite God (Catholic themed SF) didn’t look at AIs so much as genetically engineered beings and artificially created bodies that housed the human intellect, as well as clones. http://tinyurl.com/isigamazon

In Leaps of Faith (general Christian SF), androids were the object of discussion. This has an interesting parallel to the discussion here, because the (Anglican) archbishop was saying that he’d as soon give the sacraments to his TV tan an android. Meanwhile, one of the priests is marrying and baptizing the children of android/human marriages. tinyurl.com/lofamazon

One thing these stories had in common–the “artificial life” had developed enough that it had a hunger for God. Overall, the themes were toward compassion in feeding that hunger.

Regardless of our opinions on the morality of cloning, genetic engineering, and the creation of artificial beings; someday, technology will make these things fait accompli. I’m sure holier and more knowledgeable heads than mine or my writers are considering these things, far off as they may be. In the meantime, if you’re interested in seeing some speculation (and some great stories) please check out the books.
 
Anthony_A said:
Hey guys, I’m a new member here. I am a junior philosophy major. My main interests in philosophy are mind, metaphysics, and religion (in that particular order as of now). Today, for the first time, I watched the movie “Artificial Intelligence” and it brought some issues to mind. (Having seen the movie will not be necessary to answer this question)

If and when A.I. reaches a sufficient level of sophistication (whatever it may be) should “it” be given a certain amount of rights? For instance, should A.I. be given the right to live its life with protection from either the government or general moral conscience that it is wrong to murder (take the life, or whatever term) that A.I.?

This should not be seen as a question of whether or not x level of sophistication entails personhood. What raised this question for me is the fact that we generally agree that it is wrong for someone to kill a dog out of anger or even for the “fun” of it. The same principle applies to a wide range of semi-intelligent animals. So, if we were to create a “robot” that was just comparable to human intelligence (change “human” to “animal” if the scenario offends you) should it be given a certain amount of rights? If so, which rights?
Click to expand...
Animals HAVE no ‘rights.’ Neither do machines.

It is a testament to the insanity of this world when it’s against the law to step on a turtle egg but not to dismember human babies in their mother’s wombs.
 
Anthony_A said:
I have not been arguing that AI would be equal to us. I think I’ve said that in every one of my posts. My point, again, is that when a thing has consciousness we tend to value that thing. I think, especially if/when AI gets to the point of consciousness, which I see no reason why it would not in the future, we need to treat AI with the same moral respect that we treat each other with (or at least say we do).
Click to expand...
I think I understand where you are coming from. As a programmer myself, I have dabbled into A.I. It is hard to tell what the future brings, and so it is also hard to answer the question. Some in this blog have questioned how far AI can go and perhaps think it is not worth debating even. Personally, I can envision a time when we can create a system that approaches human intelect. However, I think there will always be a gap (which you seem to acknoweledge), because we are unable to program the complexities of human nature and how God made it. For instance, we might be able to program some of our “conscience” into it, but I don’t think we will be as good of a programmer as God is.

The rules of that each AI robot has, needs to be coded by a programmer. Whether it be a simple thing like “feeling” a part of its body is “hurt”… or how to make a random “thought” occur. So each programmer puts his or her own rules into play governing the AI. And I would hope that they would also put in a “conscience”. But there will likely be someone who deprograms that conscience and uses the AI bot to harm others.

When we get to the point that all this is a reality, there may need to be some sensitivity towards them as they will “learn” from us… same as dogs do. But I am not sure where that falls as to call them “rights”. Pets sort of have “rights” to be fed and taken care of, but we don’t really think of them like that generally speaking. Rather, we generally think they should be respected. But there will also be the ones that “misbehave” who need to be dismantled/put down, same as animals.

So I guess all rambling aside, the degree in which we will need to “respect” them will depend on what science hands us. It is impossible to say at this time, but some level of respect will likely have to be given.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top