The BBC recently noted that groups forecasting the future for the British government predict that robots might, in our lifetime, demand legal rights and even health care, or be drafted into military service.
The story, Robots could demand legal rights notes on Dec 21, 2006,
We're not in the business of predicting the future, but we do need to explore the broadest range of different possibilities to help ensure government is prepared in the long-term and considers issues across the spectrum in its planning," said Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser.
I should probably add this story to my "MAWBA - Might as Well be Alive" weblog.
The idea of giving robots legal rights is not nearly as far fetched as you might think.
Right now, the Western legal system has already encompassed and given rights to other non-human things, which constantly press for more. In my judgement we are just on the tipping point of having to deal with many more issues of metalife, or corporations, or things that "might as well be alive" because they act like they are alive and end up being treated that way.
If you hadn't notice it, the semi-living thingies called "corporations" have their own legal rights, completely independent of the rights of the humans that make them up. For example, tobacco ads are legal near elementary schools because the industry successfully argued that not to do so violated the company's first amendment rights.
Hmm. We don't recall in the US Constitution where it describes how many votes each corporation gets, but there is a distinct impression that Congress increasingly pays more attention to how corporations vote than how individual humans vote.
But, let's get back to the question of robots. Surely they aren't "alive" are they? Why should they get to vote? And, if they can vote, and "size doesn't matter", what if they replicate 100 billion of themselves and outvote us, and just take over that way?
A Google search for "rights of robots" yields 402 hits.
For example, KurzweilAI.net has an article on "The Rights of Robots: Exclusion and Inclusion in History and Future" by Sohail Inayatullah." The article also wonders if robots will become conscious, but self-consciousness is not a requirement for human voting.
A legal look at robot rights is posted in January, 1985 by Robert Freitas Jr. Here's what he says with highlighting added:
Under present law, robots are just inanimate property without rights or duties. Computers aren’t legal persons and have no standing in the judicial system. As such, computers and robots may not be the perpetrators of a felony; a man who dies at the hands of a robot has not been murdered. (An entertaining episode of the old Outer Limits TV series, entitled “I, Robot,” involved a court trial of a humanoid robot accused of murdering its creator.)
But blacks, children, women, foreigners, corporations, prisoners, and Jews have all been regarded as legal nonpersons at some time in history. Certainly any self-aware robot that speaks English and is able to recognize moral alternatives, and thus make moral choices, should be considered a worthy “robot person” in our society. If that is so, shouldn’t they also possess the rights and duties of all citizens?
But if Corporations are recognized as having "rights" and being legally "persons" under the law in some circumstances, then what if it turned out that robots ran such a corporation?
When you look at it, the whole idea of corporations being legally "persons" under the law sort of snuck in under the radar on us. A discussion is given by Patricia Werhane in Persons, Rights, and Corporations. (Prentice Hall).
Another interesting read is "Dismantling the barriers to legal rights for non-human animals" by Steven Wise. Indeed, in many cities cats and dogs appear to have greater rights and protection under the law than children. Humans have been fined or imprisoned for injuring or killing dogs, kittens, and a few years ago in Michigan a park-goer was charged with killing a rattlesnake in his path. Are these different rights than the rights of Dogwood trees to not be killed off?
For that matter, do "residents" have different legal rights than "non-residents", or "citizens" have different rights than "illegal aliens", or patriots have different rights than "enemy combatants?"
Where lines are drawn as to who, or what, has rights, is not at all clear, both in terms of exclusions and inclusions. If a human had a mechanical hand, would he still have rights? Certainly. How about if he had a mechanical arm? Yes again. Suppose he had a mechanical heart? Yes still. Suppose 1/3 of his brain had been replaced in the year 2020 by synthetic neural network to regrow a region lost in an accident. Would he still be "human"? Where does it stop?
Suppose the next generation of humans all get tired of lugging around computers and cell phones and simply have wireless connectivity chips built into their brains at birth. Would they still be human? Sure.
How many would they, or "it" be? Hmmm.
The December 2006 issue of Connection Science (Vol 18 No 4) is a special issue on "Android Science" with articles such as that by David Calverley, "Android Science and anima rights, does an analogy exist?"
Meanwhile, we should go back and ponder again exactly what rights corporations have, and how they got to have such rights. The history is fascinating.
But we do have to wonder if humans are like the pig farmer who finally sells the "North 40 acres" to a housing developer, whereupon the new residents of the town outvote the farmer for running a smelly nuisance and throw him out and put in a shopping mall.
Having given rights to corporations, where does it stop? If we give rights to robots, where will that stop?
These are design questions, social questions, that we need to spend more time discussing, because the answers are not obvious and are going to be hotly debated, and, while we debate, a shift in rights is going to be going on anyway.
We don't even know how to have that conversation yet. We don't even have a basic vocabulary for describing things that act like they are alive, like corporations, but then do things like "merge" or "divide into three parts." We don't even know how to count.
So, how long will it be that we move from GM's current complaint that "$1,500 of the price of every car is due to employee or retiree health care costs" to "$1,500 of every smart car is due to universal health care coverage for all legal persons, which now includes corporations and, of course, smart cars. The bill was passed after a very successful and clever lobbying effort by the cars themselves, which were tired of relying on humans to remember to change their oil, etc."
If corporations are legal "persons" under US law, then, if we get universal health care, are corporations entitled to government payments for whatever services corporations require to maintain their internal workings, fitness, and "health"?
Once we start sliding the term "legal person" around to cover entities that are composite meta-beings like corporations, we need to figure out how to slide the term "health" around as well, and get way more serious about defining what, exactly, "a healthy corporation" or "a healthy nation" means, legally, practically, physically.
(Photo credit: Dan Coulter )
technorati tags:robots, rights, robotrights, animalrights, MAWBA, metabeings, systems, nestedsystems, law, consciousness, AI, intelligence, voting, power, influence, future
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