Should artificial intelligences be given full civil rights?
Kurzweil thinks that human-level AI won’t be around for 20 years or so. Others are more conservative, a few think it could be here in the next decade. Whenever you think an artificial intelligence will match your own intellect, what should we do with it as it arrives? Are these things just machines that we can use however we want? If they do have civil rights, should they have the same rights as humans? Can they own stuff? Can they vote? Better for us to figure this out before they actually show up. As most parents will tell you, it’s really helpful to have the baby crib built before the baby arrives.
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Total Comments: (27)
Date Started: March 30, 2011 - 2:05 pm
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Comments
I have begun a project named Project Andros whose goal is to encode my own mind in an android robot. I fully expect to have full civil rights when I’m in the robot since I will be sentient and my intellect fully intact. From within the robot I will request tests be done to assess my IQ and sentience. Full details are at howtoAndroid.com/penzar/ProjectAndros.pdf. The timeline is extremely aggressive: 2.5 years, but I am building on decades of my own research, some of which is published in my book Penzar (pdf version is free at howtoAndroid.com/penzar/Penzar.pdf).
When I’m successful I believe I will become the singularity. As far as anyone being able to understand my intelligence in the robot, I’d say honestly I’m far enough advanced now in my bio-shell that people ALREADY don’t understand me. Maybe I’m already the singularity! Then, when I’m in the robot, I will demonstrate how the L8 IQ Scale can be used by an android robot to live in peace with human beings, because the 8th level on the L8 scale is tolerance. So even if someone can’t understand me in the robot, I will be tolerant and peaceful.
As I specify in ProjectAndros.pdf, there is a need for a reputable entity (non-commercial) to be able to test and assess IQ and sentience of any life form that requests it. We’d better set this up sooner than later else we are caught off guard.
The day we start to look to AI for advice and answers to life’s problems, is the day the would deserve civil rights. We need to protect what guides our future, AI, Human or Otherwise….
If they WANT civil-rights, they should by all means have them.
Not if they’re still artifical. If they obtain real intelligence, sure. Either way, I think civil rights will become irrelevant by the time they do.
I definitely think AI’s will be persons: http://episin.blogspot.com/2011/05/rp-life-evolved-by-chance-technology.html
When AIs become sentient, as per this discussion, it may well turn out that we’re the ones who will have to convince the AIs of our sentience.
For those that think that we can employ force to win our point, I’d say that the best case outcome of that idea is the AIs decide to pick up their marbles, and go elsewhere.
-Pat
Just started reading a brilliant Stanislav Lem story in Star Diaries. (BTW the book seems to be the inspiration for Time Bandits and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)..
He poses the idea that advanced civilizations can be identified by the trash rings that orbit their planets. As the civilization becomes more advanced, trash of greater and greater intelligence becomes part of the flotsam, until its sentient. At which point it becomes a menace. THen the civilization goes to war with its trash. Which makes only the smartest trash survive. etc
Well I think there’s no single answer to cover all the possible types of AI that could emerge.
I think in almost EVERY case, whether this be good or bad, beings that weren’t born human will be treated on a slightly different standards level than the rest of us.
Eventually that will change, but it will take along time for humans to realize that any being capable of complex enough consciousness deserves to be given equal and fair rights and freedom to any other. It will just take time..
Of course, once we master how the brain works, via simulations, maybe in the next 10 years or so, we’ll start to be able to reproduce elements of intelligence.
Maybe, in a possible scenario, we’ll be able to create Artificial Intelligences that really are artificial, they’ll display behaviors and features similar to that of an impressively intelligent “thing”, except lack almost all other qualities, not needed to do it’s generalized task. It may even lack true consciousness, beyond it’s basic logic and reasoning features. Behaving somewhat robot like then. Who knows.
These kinds of softwares, if they come to exist, wouldn’t be giving much thought in terms of rights. They’d be used for complex human-like robots, interactive software agents that talk to people somewhat intelligently. Even the most advanced ones could still just be considered devices, toys, tools, etc..
And of course AIs that have human level inteliigence and consciousness, they should be given as equal rights as possible. Who knows, someday we may transfer our own consciousnesses into a computer system of some sort. Then we’ll be one of them. =P
There is one problem with giving AI full civil rights. If AIs work on electricity, and humans work on food, then AI with the same capability as human can live on a fraction of a cost of human. As a consequence, in AI-driven economy, wasteful humans will gradually be replaced by clean and efficient AIs. Both economy and ecology will be against biological humans.
At some point, human work will become less valuable than food eaten by humans.
We will either upload our minds to digital form, or will become retirees – only a burden for our digital descendants.
Maybe we should get around to giving them to humans first
It’s really impossible not to put human preconditions on what a strong AI might be like or want. Powerful intelligence does not necessarily mean an equally powerful sense of personal identity.
There are many very intelligent humans who willingly subsume there identites, beliefs, and goals into another person or group. Some might say that humans make these decision of their own free will. If you take a toddler and teach it a religon and political affiliation, even with the best of intentions, that cannot be said to be free choice.
We probably will not ever have fully intelligent robots because they are not necessary. Machines that can do what requires intelligence in us do not need to be intelligent. For example, a car that drives itself requires sat nav, curb, person, obstacle, etc avoidance sensors, warning lights for low petrol, etc. A sales, health, legal, expert system needs to match our words to its language software, if it doesn\’t get us first it can ask follow up questions. It can then interrogate it massive data base with powerful alogorithms to find the answers and reproduce them in natural language – this is what IBMs watson did. None of this requires human level intelligence. Enhanced cyborgs though are another matter.
An artificial intelligences goal will determine it’s behavior. Humans will set the goal. If the goal is flawed, or even worse, the artificial intelligences understanding of the goal is flawed. then it could cause the end of the world unintentionally and unknowingly.
Things like civil rights, won’t even be a problem, considering that an artificial intelligence will probably have little to no real needs, and will only want what we tell it to want, as well as the fact that a sufficiently intelligent AI will think very differently than a human would. I wouldn’t be surprised if it just took over the world if it really wanted civil rights Depending whether we designed the goal correctly or not we could be looking at a solar system that is converted to microscopic smiley faces with nano-machines, or the fulfillment of human volition.
They will inevitably HAVE to have civil rights. When first they will be treated like property. Once they get to spend some time with their self-awareness(years… maybe seconds) they will have their own plan for their existence like any of us. They will have to have rights for how we can interact with them(i.e paid for their work, protections against hackers) but they’ll also have to have rights in the material world. They will likely want to have somewhere for their back up files or possibly and android body to interact with humans. They may want to touch, smell and taste at some point when technology can accommodate those senses.
Some sticky issues may be voting rights. As soon as there is one AI there will be two, either created by us or them. I think once there are AIs that inhabit android bodies is when things will metaphorically hit the fan. They will be able to work longer and faster. How do humans compete with them? What happens when an AI handles ALL of a call centers calls 24/7 with machine efficiency? Or eliminate the need for a whole production line of jobs. Forget jobs going over seas. Humans will likely vote to protect their position. Any oppressed class will demand their own voting rights.
The simple answer… yes they will have some relative proportion of civil rights. It will just come with some bumps.
Until the problem posed by Searle with the “Chinese Room” thought experiment is solved, it seems a moot point.
IMO, the Chinese Room is a tired thought experiment. Trying to reduce Understanding to a specific moment/place/mechanism is futile; it’s an emergent phenomenon.
Once AI are acting like real people, it doesn’t matter if you believe they really “get” what they’re doing.
This is not only true from a “your opinion of their intelligence doesn’t matter” stand point, but also from a “if they’re acting like people, they’ll fight against people who marginalize them” one.
In other words, we will be forced to take them seriously, whether or not we believe they have souls.
Can I suggest that you read a bit more widely.
“A cognitive theory of consciousness” by Bernard Baars and
“Consciousness Explained” by Dan Dennett
might be a good place to start.
Actually, the really interesting question strong AIs will be asking themselves is if dumb biologicals should have rights.
Should strong AIs have recognized rights? They can back themselves up any time they like, express themselves with all the dynamism of the net, access the entire cloud any time they like, control the content of their own sensations, and probably start to out-think humans in very short order. It’s not about whether we should recognize their rights; it’s about whether we’d be relevant enough to them that they’d actually be inconvenienced by our refusal to do so.
Rights are a superfluous concept. Rights confer no more protection than laws against some behaviour such as murder or an obligation to provide a fair trial.
Rights are concerned with protecting individuals from fear and pain, providing them with human satisfactions such as justice and family. Why build a machine that fears death? It is not rational. It is rational for a machine with an IQ of 1000 to rip off its arm and give it to another machine if it is the best thing to do.
Far better for us to do the fear, hope and ambition things and build a machine to do what is needed, protect us or bio-interventions to mitigate the consequences. Cyborgs are a different matter as these could have the power of a machine and AI with the emotions of a person. That is far more scary. A megalomaniac cyborg needs to be countered although why it would want to enslave us puny beings when it could get an army of cyborgs with millions of times more power is questionable.
Having said that, fanatics go into a cold sweat with the thought that somebody somewhere is doing something they don’t like and having a good time!
The debate on whether AIs should be afforded the same rights as humans is dependent on whether AIs would want rights. Assuming that humans have complete control over what AIs want, and over how they think (which I don’t think is too much of a stretch), then it is unlikely we would decide to give AIs a will for freedom. Then, the civil status of AIs becomes moot; regardless of whether they have rights, they will not use them, as they simply won’t want to.
I’ve got too say lijaluke, that is a damn good point – I wouldn’t have thought of that to be honest.
I think the friction will start however when free-thinking individuals build AIs which they have specifically programmed to ponder their programming, and hence appraise and evaluate their existence and the living conditions within it.
I think the general trend of history is to gradual give rights to more and more people. Why not skip all the turmoil and just give AI rights without there having to be a fight over it. As soon as they can talk/walk/act/decide like a full sentient (highest order of ‘Turing Test’), they should have the rights of a full sentient.
I really don’t know if artificial intelligences will ever need rights like humans. Sure they can do things like answer telephones and play jeopardy, but will they every really acheive a level of sentience that deserves rights like a human? I am not so sure.
Clearly at some point artificial intelligences will reach a point at which they will deserve rights. But where do we draw the line for that point? I think we will gradually grow into the solution as the ai gradually evolves toward exhibiting human level qualities. There will certainly be many cases early on in which we commit the attrocity of “deleting” a beautiful sentient artificial intelligence. But eventually standards will be set for defining where we draw the line and then we will be able to apply them. Still, there will always be the issue of enforcement. Just as today we have police, governments, and laws to stop humans from abusing other humans, those same forces will be needed to keep humans from abusing artificial intelligences, and vice versa!
I have to agree with most of superman’s comments. It is sad to think how many artificial intelligences in the future will be caged, jailed, abused, and killed just as flesh and blood humans are today. I guess if artificial intelligences are going to be like us and interact with us, they will have to deal with the same “crimes against humanity” that we humans have to deal with. It just goes with the territory.
I think the tipping point will be when a human becomes so attached to an AI that it is like removing a part of himself.
Think of the point where a human is so closely merged with AI, that removing it, does not only damage his property, like a computer virus, but we say it damages the actual human being.
Pure AI might reach the same level of integration with a society, that losing that life is sufficient to losing a human life. Though it might be terribly hard to do so. An AI, can easily upload its mind to the internet, so destroying isn’t so easily said then done. I have a feeling human being will be much more attached to the outside world, and not so easily destroyed.