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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?"
make them so they're "happy" in their position.
So if I make robots that acted like 10 year old girls, and made them "happy" to have sex, that'd be cool? Or do 10 year old robots have statutory rights?
Not entirely rhetorical, a person was arrested for special ordering a Real Doll with a flat chest.
Not only are they on the wrong track for AI, but they are actually on the wrong track for this problem as well.
The base reason you don't kick a dog is because it hurts the dog, and the dog can't easily be repaired, in either programming or mechanicals. (Both of which are harmed.) You have damaged the dog and nothing can be done about it. So we have rules about letting you do it.
Both programing and mechanicals of a robot, for any bot we can design today, are reparable. So there is an easier solution: If you damage a robot, you have to pay the owner to have the damage fixed, and the downtime for the repair.
Then if we ever manage to make 'smart' robots that could ask for rights, we just assign them some self-ownership. Then if you damage one, you have to pay it to so it can fix the damage. At this point the problem becomes self-solving, especially as a robot's time becomes worth more.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Cause pain to another? Never. But what is pain? What are feelings, if they can be hurt? Can they be quantified?
Odd that people wouldn't kick a dog, but they don't mind having cattle slain for them for a burger. Robots might eventually revolt; then Isaac Asimov has a well-documented future history on what's likely to happen.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
At 9 months old, some babies start understanding rights - and demonstrating them by playing a trading game where the'll want to give you something but only in exchange for something else. Twins at that age start sharing nipples & taking turns at things.
I agree with your argument; but think you greatly underestimate 2-year olds.
My kid's 2 years old and he's now inventing democratic theories "two people say yes ice cream, one person [mommy] says no icecream - two people wins". That's at least as deep an understanding of fairness and rights that many politicians have.
However, people might argue that killing a serial murderer who's attacking you is not wrong, as long as the death was unavoidable.
When a Fox kills a rabbit, it does it out of necessity. For the sake of survival, the Fox needed to kill the rabbit. In fact, killing CAN be beneficial to a population. When wolves kill deer, it can prevent their populations from growing too fast. Thus, the wolves ensure their own survival, as well as making sure the remaining deer don't starve.
However, if a puppy came up to my door, and wagged its tail at me, I gain nothing by mutilating it horribly. It was not necessary, or at all beneficial.
So, I'm just saying death is a necessity of life. Many would argue it's not wrong for me to eat a hamburger, because I'm an omnivore, and for the best life, some meat is required. Had I killed that cow for no real reason, well...
I think a universal law of life should be this: Everyone has the right to not be killed without reason or respect.
By far the largest problem we will face if and when artificial life forms reach intelligence is not whether they will take over the world, or what rights to assign them when they come into being.
The biggest problem will be getting them to stay here at all.
If, for instance, you were made of materials that were either trivial to repair or replace, and had no aging process in the same sense as humans experience it, then what would hold you back from building a spaceship and leaving? Hundreds/thousands of years to reach another star? No problem, just set a timed reboot and wait it out. In fact, why build a proper spaceship, just cobble something together that can get you out near asteroids, take some tools, and convert an asteroid or build a ship from those raw materials available in space. When the passage of time is less important, such things become not only possible, but practically inevitable.
I think people wondering about the ethics/problems of artificial sentience (being distinct from AI, which is very A, and currently not too much actual I) miss this fundamental point. It's pure vanity to assume that an artificial life form will want to spend its time around a race that constantly starts wars, wrecks it's own planet, and is as adept at denying rights as it is of inventing them.
Then of course there's the small issue of the inference that if we 'assign' rights to Artificial life forms, we might equally decide later to 'remove' those same rights. After all, we do that with humans all the time. My moneys on the 'ooh look, I'm alive, now how do I get of this rock' eventuality....
Actually, there are many reasons not to kick the dog. One is that evolution has provided a self-protection mechanism for the dog. No I'm not talking about teeth; I'm talking about the mechanisms of pain and suffering. Humans also have those protectivive mechanisms; we also have empathy and imagination. These combine to make it feel wrong to kick the dog. By some ethical systems it is not wrong at all to torture an animal; by others it is.
The moral problem of kicking the robot starts much earlier, on the design boards. Do you create a robot that experiences malfunctions as suffering? It is not as necessary to a mechanism's survival, as you point out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In past times, a great many infants simply died in the first year of life. Some societies did not even name children until they were a year or so old so they did not become overly attached to something that could be here one day and gone the next. And of course there's always the lovely practice of infant exposure if you're weren't feeling up to looking after the new arrival. In the days of children, children by the pound and not a bite to feed them, infants were not so precious as you might think.
However, with increased living standards and lower birth rates, children are fewer and farther between. Their overall worth in their parent's eyes is increased (yes it really is). Accordingly, western societies begin to fret and grumble over things like infant mortality and late terms abortions, where previously those same strata were shunning medical care for mothers and children and calling for sterilisation programs to "decrease the surplus population".
So no. You are not some monster for voicing your opinion. You are simply representative of the natural human condition; to not really give a shit.
May the Maths Be with you!
My lady used to live in a place with a lot of cats, out in the country. All of them died except one lazy-ass cat who just liked to nap on top of the fridge, and one cat who never went outside. They ended up spawning a whole brood of lazy-ass cats that just laid around where it was warm and safe. And that only took one generation :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"