Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights?

holy_calamity writes "Hot on the heals of a UK government report that predicted robots would demand citizens rights within fifty years, an Arizona state lawyer has suggested that sub-human robots should have rights too. Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical — would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog? And can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"

Comments

Heals?

[Evil Adrian]

"Hot on the heals"?

LOL

I guess we know what they're NOT teaching in schools.

Fake

[Cafe Alpha]

No doubt the first "robot" to demand civil rights will be deliberately programmed to pretend sentience and to demand civil rights.

Re:Fake

[Verteiron]

Prove you're not programmed to do the same :)

Re:Fake

[MrNaz]

I have never even met an animal rights activist, and I can easily see that you are about as clued in on this topic as a turnip.

The animals' rights movement is based on the idea that humans, having greater intelligence than all other species as well as the intangible quality we call "sentience", has a responsibilty for the welfare of the world, and its contents. All animals only seek resources that are needed for survival. Our desire for things over and above this, such as widescreen TVs and a bigger SUV than our neighbour, indicates that there is a fundamental difference between humans and other species.

Based on the greater burden each human places on the Earth relative to individuals of other species, human civilisation has recognised a need to act responsibly. Monkeys do not create modifications to their trees capable of polluting the entire forest into a desert, and whales don't create oil slicks. Our ability to affect far more than just our immediate surroundings and co-opt the forces of chemistry, physics and biology to our own endsis what gives rise to this moral responsibility. The fact that we can understand the very concept of "morality" is what gives us the moral responsibility to use it.

"Management" you say? So I can transport and kill them in the most economically efficient manner I please despite causing them great physical pain? The idea that a dumb animal does not need to be treated with respect because it is incapable of vocalising the concept is laughably stupid. I humbly suggest you refrain from using terms like "intellectually bankrupt". *walks away mumbling something about a pot and a kettle*

Re:Fake

[VJ42]

I'm sorry, I do not recognize your statement. Please rephrase

Kicking a robot dog

[thewiz]

I have three cats at home; two of them are smart enough to avoid me while I stumble around in the dark. The third cat occasionally gets his tail stepped on. The hideous screech he emits makes me walk on tip-toes for the rest of the day.

My Roomba, on the other hand, emits a soft rrr-rrr-rrr when I step on it and doesn't hiss at me afterwards. Would I kick a robotic dog? Sure, and I wouldn't worrying about it crapping on my bed afterwards.

Great

[sorrill]

We give rights to robots while, at the same time, we take them from human beings. I love this planet.

Priorities, priorities...

[MidVicious]

It's so good to see that the delegation of priorities regarding Human Rights has now moved Robot one notch above Dark Skinned Human.

Thankfully, it's still one notch below Canine.

Re:Priorities, priorities...

[operagost]

Stop being a victim. Let me know when there's an America Robot College Fund and a National Association for the Advancement of Electronic People.

Just ask

[KDR_11k]

Ask a robot if it wants human rights. If it doesn't, well, that's it.

A robot only wants what it's programmed to want, if it's programmed to want something human rights cover it'll want those but if it's programmed to e.g. not mind being kicked it won't demand not to be kicked.

If there needs to be an ethical rule for robots and rights it should be not to program robots to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to be human, don't make them want to have human rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.

Problem solved.

Re:Just ask

[Orange Crush]

how do we know if the robot really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience?

How do we know if a person really is sentient, or is merely simulating sentience?

The short answer: We don't. The real problem is that we can't even define sentience clearly enough to definitively test for it. Once AI gets to the point where it appears sentient as far as anyone can tell, then it won't matter if it's really sentient. It becomes a philosophical argument.

Missing the point

[DerGeist]

The point here is not whether you're hitting a real animal or a virtual one, that's just a vehicle for the real problem.

You shouldn't vent your frustrations by damaging things, living or otherwise. It's not good for your mental health and it's not an effective way of expressing anger, in fact it tends to make it worse.

But, of course, a "robot dog" is just a program -- a program running on a box with some wires in it. It is clearly not sentient since it does exactly what it is told and feels no pain (since it is not programmed to do so). It may masquerade as consciousness, but in the end it is still run by a wholly deterministic set of instructions executing according to a fixed program. Now, the question of whether that is also an accurate description of a human (albeit with a far more complex program) is an open question indeed, but for now you're safe if you forget to feed your Tamagotchi for a few weeks. I doubt you'll have the ASPCA ... err... ASPCR? .. pounding on your door.

A good thought experiment but still early

[Jtheletter]

Part of the reason we protect animals is because while they do not exhibit higher consciousness (not here to debate that term, but it's fuzzy to say the least) they do have some feelings and can certainly feel pain. Most of animal protection laws AFAIK deal mostly with not inflicting undue pain or stress on an animal. With robots - especially 'lower level' robots - there is very little in the current state of the art that we could call concepts of pain or stress. If anything like those exists in a robot, it is because it was explicitly programmed into the robot. This is where the concept begins to get a bit rediculous in the real world, at least at current tech levels. If a robot can feel pain of some sort, would it be against the law then to simply uninstall the pain perception ability? What counts as "pain" in a robot anyway? Are low batteries part of that? If a very simple light-seeking robot is put in a dark closet, are you depriving it of food/resources/joy? Robots are tools and you cannot hurt a tools feelings, even if you destroy it. Until some higher level of thought/consciousness/AI is inherent in all robots great or small then there's nothing to worry about.
And if in that future your robot feels you are abusing it, well, then reprogram it to like the abuse. ;)

Next political bandwagon?

[MasterC]

Has "robot rights" achieved critical mass that we'll start seeing more of these studies? (This one even coins/calls for "android rights activists"!!!) Sensing injury is one thing, being sentient & self-aware are completely different (enough that I can hardly see the slippery slope). With two stories on /. in as many weeks and Gates' prediction about robots, this is looking out to be a boy-who-cried-wolf situation.

I believe cats and dogs are sentient, self-aware beings and they should be treated with that much respect. In fact, it is quite easy to see dogs possess mens rea ("guilty mind") which human babies, toddlers, and even some children don't possess (I'm no parent but I do have cousins with a total of over a dozen kids under 6 years of age so I have plenty of observation time). Robots haven't earned anything *near* what cats & dogs possess so all these predictions and calls for rights are way too premature.

It will be a sad day for humanity if more attention is given to robot rights than animal rights or to the environment. We aren't there yet, but it's looking like we will if this trend keeps pace. I'm just as much of a dork/nerd/geek as the next /. reader and I enjoy sci-fi and thinking of such stuff, but come on..."robot rights" is way to premature.

Until

[jrwr00]

I don't see Robot Rights even worth thinking until we come up with AI that can write its own code, so it can really "Think" for it self, and do what us humans do best, Adapt to its surroundings without "Higher beaning" interaction.

Are you sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical"

Not really. Not according to the burger I ate over the weekend.

Looking at this seriously

[Anti_Climax]

would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog?

If the robot is a finite state machine where of all of it's output and processes are strictly defined, there's no chance that it's somehow self-aware or anywhere close to that. There would be no thought at all, just simple comparisons as defined by programming. No problem kicking something like an Aibo, with the exception of repercussions from the person who owned it.

Now if AI gets to the point that it's on par with normal animal brain functionality, then I might worry about it. Of course, an android likely to be made from stuff that's stronger than flesh, and I'd bet that an android made of carbon fiber and titanium isn't going to register a kick a pain, though I'm sure it would do what it could to avoid damage.

I say we worry about it when we actually have something close to animal intelligence and sensory input in out robots. Although it will be interesting when it does get there.

Poor argument

[Per Abrahamsen]

A three weeks old baby doesn't understand the concept of rights either, yet it is protected by them. Unless you want to increase the legal abortion age to around two years after birth, you have to find a better argument.

A similar argument can be made with severely retarded and some kind of insane people.

Re:Poor argument

[s20451]

If an insane person kills another insane person, most people would agree that this is tragic and wrong.

If a fox kills a rabbit in the wild, most people would call that natural.

If animals are not expected to respect each others' rights, then they have no real rights to speak of.

A government-funded report??????

[Marcos Eliziario]

I really think it's about time to some public scrutiny on how public money for research is being spent.

Unavoidable?

[Kadin2048]

Seems like a logical argument to me. There's no strictly rational reason why a person born without a functioning higher brain should have more rights than a German Shepherd; that they do is mostly a testament to our emotional attachment to members of our own species.

If you take on premise that there is nothing innately special about human beings (no soul, special resemblance to God, etc.), then the difference between humans and other species (particularly other higher primates) becomes one of degree rather than kind. I think it's a basically unavoidable conclusion, once you take being "anointed by God" out of the equation.

The non-hypocritical solutions, as I see it, are to either treat low-functioning homo sapiens as animals, or treat high-functioning animals (by which I mean certain species of marine mammals, chimpanzees, great apes; probably not really GSDs) as we would mentally-impaired humans.

Re:Rights

[DM9290]

I said: You attach too much significance to "rights". They are legal fictions.

your reply:
"Not in the U.S. Our Founding Fathers recognized that men were born with "natural rights". The Bill of Rights does not give us these rights, it merely recognizes them and basically says the government can't mess with them."

I'd be convinced if I considered the founding fathers to hold some kind of monopoly on truth and if I considered the Bill of Rights to be a philosophical memorandum rather than what it is : LEGISLATION.

A legal fiction is a legal fact that is true for the purposes of a court of law, without any regard to any truth in the real world.

The fact that "legally" there all men are created equal and imbued in inalienable right, does not in fact cause all men to be equal nor cause them to be imbued with anything.. or even to be CREATED for that matter. It is a paper document which directs the courts to PRETEND that it is true.

It is NOT reality, and what the founding fathers said is only relevant to what LEGALLY you can do to animals.. it says nothing about what you can MORALLY do to animals.

And yes.. the government infringes the bill of rights frequently. And the courts have allowed it to. (so has God apparently).

I said: Does man ever have a chance to put God on trial?

you replied: Every single day. A common example of this is a crisis of faith.

If that was a trial God would rotting in some prison cell with no possibility of parol for eternity.

According the Catholic faith and most god-of-abraham style religions you have no jurisdiction to question God. And to question God is a crime punishable by anything from excommunication, stoning, burning, or exile. According to Christian dogma you have a choice of FAITH for which you will be rewarded or disbelief for which you will burn in eternal hellfire.

A trial is a matter of PROOF and not FAITH.

Here is another legal fiction for you. We fantasize when a person is convicted of a crime that this means he really did it. It is a legal fiction.

It means the judge/jury found that he very most likely did it.. that the evidence shows he did it beyond a reasonable doubt, but NOT beyond all doubt. There is a small chance he didn't do it. It is a FACT that a number of people (one hopes is small, but it would be at least about 1%, but some argue it is closer to 20%) who are convicted didn't actually do anything wrong and everyone in the legal profession KNOWS THIS. Guilt is a legal FICTION. Likewise.. then a person is aquited.. that doesn't mean they didn't actually do it.

The legal system operates on legal fictions.. it is there so that in the majority of cases people are deterred from screwing around too much and making sure society can basically operate without resorting to endless violence and anarchy. It isn't there to try to find the absolute truth at any cost. The absolute truth has nothing to do with law. And likewise.. rights are NOT absolute truthes.. they are also legal fictions.. created by man to make it easier to justify certain moral concepts which are generally speaking usually true.

For example: The right to life.... the right we ignore when we execute someone.

If the right was truly INALIENABLE then no government could EVER execute someone. Because no matter how hard you try, you can not seperate an INALIENABLE THING. i.e. even the worst mass murderer or serial killer still has the right to life. And yet the US government kills them. As well as traitors. Which is strange considering a traitor obviously does not agree with the state and therefore the state by the logic of the declaration of independance has no sovereignty over him.

Am I blowing your mind? and you thought the world was so black and white didn't you?

anyway the point is... rights are a simplification. they are not essential truths of the universe.. and if you manage to prove animals have no rights it really means nothing because you can also prove humans have