Legal Rights for Computers

nicholast writes "There's a really smart story in the current issue of Legal Affairs Magazine about granting legal recognition to computers: when that might happen, why it could happen, and what a discussion about it will teach humans about themselves."

Comments

The Measure of a Man

[Anonymous Coward]

"It sits there looking at me, and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak the the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue. Does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose."

-- Captain Phillipa Louvois

I believe this was already settled in the case of Maddox vs. Data on stardate 42523.7. The case determined that Lt. Commander Data, an artificial lifeform constructed by Dr. Noonian Soong, was not the property of Starfleet, but rather a sentient being with the full legal rights afforded any other.

Is it April 1st ?

[Space cowboy]

This is not a "really smart" story, it's a fantasy. It's too many ill-informed people (with too much time on their hands) that have seen "I, Robot". It even reads like some of the 'Susan Calvert' Asimov stories.

There is a world of difference between programming something to *act* as though it has emotions, and something actually having an emotional or original response. The former is no different to calculating a spreadsheet, the latter has to do with independent and original experiences and actions - implying intelligence and self-awareness. No computer today, no matter how well programmed, is as self-aware as a house fly. We don't grant flies legal rights.

The closest we've come to simulating intelligence, or at least produced non-programmed behaviour in computers are the neural networks coded up where the instructions ("program") are held within and are a function of the dataset rather than the construct. Even neural nets are simply matrix equations, albeit non-linear usually, and are thus completely deterministic. The typical neural network has less than 1000 nodes within it, the human brain has 100 billion neurons on average (with 10-50 times that many glial cells). The phrase "does not compare" doesn't even come close.

So, in short, what a load of rubbish.

Simon.

Re:Is it April 1st ?

[localman]

thus completely deterministic

Yes, the programmed neural nets today are, as far as I know, completely deterministic. They are like a snapshot of a brain (a very small brain) with the feedback loop disabled.

Is the brain deterministic? In a sense it seems so -- you can probably look at each neuron and it will act in a predictable way with a give set of input. I think the trick is in the feedback loops. Even with deterministic things, once you've got a few of them interacting with each other, the problem becomes non-deterministic in a sense -- for example, we can't even precisely solve Newton's three body problem: how three gravitational bodies in orbit will react, i.e. the sun, earth, and moon. It's because they each effect each other. This I think is the key distinction between natural brains and our current simulations. The feedback is missing or oversimplified to make the systems deterministic.

It is funny how people keep buying that if you can crunch just a few more billion numbers a second you'll suddenly have intelligent machines. I am sure of this: if we had a machine with _infinite_ processing power, it would still not be intelligent because we don't know how to write the software!

I do believe we'll see intelligent machines someday, but it will be a breakthrough in the understanding of neural networks with feedback or some such. And then we'll have a blank "brain" that will need to learn much like a human. It'll probably require years of positive reinforcement and careful dicipline to get it to be useful. I don't believe it'll be noticably smarter than the smartest humans, though it might be able to think faster to some degree since it's neural timing might be faster; our switches don't have quite the refresh rate :)

Anyways -- just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Want to see how it will go?

[Gadzinka]

Just look at the history of women rights, black rights, gay rights. Some of those cases are "solved" today, some of them are pending, but one thing is for sure: as soon as another category of sentient beings demands equal treatment, as subject, not as object, it gets nasty and former "master race" rarelly gives up without a fight.

Robert

Already have rights...

[CRC'99]

Don't know about you, but I'm already 0wn3d by my computer - every time it crashes or needs a reinstall....

Self-awareness does not necessarily grant rights.

[wasted]

I had a couple of dogs that seemed to me to be self-aware. They did not have the same legal rights I did as far as I know. So why would a computer be granted legal rights based on self-awareness?

Chimpanzees have some intelligence, as do dolphins, but we still confine them to zoos and do not afford them the right to a public attorney to work toward securing their freedom.

If we base legal rights solely on intelligence, than when someone has a stroke, enters a severe coma and is no longer able to demonstrate cohesive thought, does that mean they should not have rights anymore?

Just food for thought. Soemone with a better philosophy background than I (he or she took TWO or more philosophy classes) will probably be able to answer these questions better than I.