Machine rights

[morningstar2651]

Humans have rights.
Animals have rights.

Should intelligent machines have rights too? Why or why not?

If yes, then what should be the criteria for determining whether or not an intelligent machine should or should not have rights? The Turing Test?

 

[D McCloud]

Are you arguing whether or not machines should be included in the moral community? I think the criteria should be.

1.capacity to feel pain
2.has personal interests and goals
3.must be able to make a definate claim of moral standing within the community

I personally believe that if the machine lacks all three of these, it should be excluded from the moral community. However, if it had the capability for #2 and #3, I would include it in the moral community, but it would be marginalized

 

[JimmyKoKoPop]

Are you arguing whether or not machines should be included in the moral community? I think in order to make a sound descion, we should decide what the criteria should be for inclusion.
1.capacity to feel pain
2.has personal interests and goals
3.must be able to make a definate claim of moral standing within the community

I personally believe that if the machine has the capacity to fell pain or pleasure I would include in the moral community, but it would be marginalized unless it had the capability to fulfill the other two criteria.

I tend to generally agree with the above. But, true artificial intelligence is far from reality. I've read quite a bit about attempts to develop it - human intelligence, or even something like rat intelligence, is still far away. The way "AI" works now doesn't really qualify as true intelligence - they can't come up with anything truely new.

That said, if AI does ever reach that level, it will become time to think about such an entities' moral standing. However, just because something has intelligence doesn't mean it should have rights.. I think it should have to have some type of individual mind and personality for that to happen.

 

[Anti-Fear]

1. All things that have rights now are ALIVE.
2. LIFE is defined as something that has its own unique DNA code.
3. Machines cannot have their own dna code. They cannot reproduce.
4. Intelligence cannot be used as criteria for granting rights because some poeple who are retarded have rights. Some people have more intelligence, some less, they hvae rights.
5. Many animal species have been granted rights as well.

 

[Spherical Time]

What if we started making biologically based computers that use proteins to make calculations.

They'd have DNA code then, and it's theoretically possible that someday that they could be designed to reproduce.

Would they be alive then?

/Sci-Fi Nerd

 

[David Gould]

1. All things that have rights now are ALIVE.
2. LIFE is defined as something that has its own unique DNA code.
3. Machines cannot have their own dna code. They cannot reproduce.
4. Intelligence cannot be used as criteria for granting rights because some poeple who are retarded have rights. Some people have more intelligence, some less, they hvae rights.
5. Many animal species have been granted rights as well.

That is an odd definition of 'life'. Are you saying that if aliens turned up that did not have DNA then you would not consider them to be alive?

 

[Lifesaver]

Neither animals, let alone machines, can possibly have rights.

 

[David Gould]

Neither animals, let alone machines, can possibly have rights.

And here rights language shows itself to be a confused mess ...

I will not comment further except to ask where rights are derived from and whether they can be legitimately removed.

This should demonstrate adequately why 'rights' is a term used to describe things that do not actually exist.

 

[David Gould]

(Note that the above is not directed specifically at you, Lifesaver. It is simply a general rant at the whole confusion of 'rights'.)

 

[Abbadon]

I have no problem going to a civil rights march for a vacuum cleaner to be beaten by the government if the vacuum is capable of forming it's own opinion about the situation and my actions.

(Morningstar2651, have you been watching the Matrix recently?)

 

[morningstar2651]

Nope, just been pondering. If a machine has intelligence and a personality of its own, should it be protected from harm?

Machines can reproduce without being intelligent -- robots can be programmed for the task of building robots.

 

[Nor]

There's no way we can know weither or not something is alive and self-aware. You cannot prove to me that you are alive and not just acting like you're alive. I cannot prove it to you. Consciousness is an entirely subjective experience. But what effect does it have upon you to look at other people, to interact with other people, with the belief that they are alive and self-aware? Would the dynamics of human interaction play out differently if we didn't think about other people that way? Look at how we interact with our technology. We don't think of it as being alive. We think of it as a tool to use, and we are destroying our planet with it.

I believe we will end up treating AIs as if they were living entities, regardless of weither they are or not. If a machine is able to convincingly emulate a human, we will think of it as a human. There's a company in Japan that created a female android that was extremely life-like. It could speak, move it's mouth convincingly in sync with the words, and make realistic facial expressions. People who interacted with it would often find themselves treating it like a real person, being polite to it, making eye contact with it, etc. We cannot know for certain if an AI is truly alive. But how would it affect us as a society, and how would it affect the way we use our technology, if we believed it was alive?

 

[Lifesaver]

I will not comment further except to ask where rights are derived from and whether they can be legitimately removed.

Rights are derived from having a rational soul.

Whether or not it is okay to trample one of them to guarantee a more important one, it depends on the situation.

And if asked to define rights, I'd say they are the recognition of things people generally deserve to have, for no other reason than being a man; or, in the case of rights which belong only to certain classes, for no other reason than being a member of that class.

 

[David Gould]

Rights are derived from having a rational soul.

Whether or not it is okay to trample one of them to guarantee a more important one, it depends on the situation.

And if asked to define rights, I'd say they are the recognition of things people generally deserve to have, for no other reason than being a man; or, in the case of rights which belong only to certain classes, for no other reason than being a member of that class.

Can these rights be legitimately removed? For example, if there is a right to life, can God, for example, legitimately remove that right?

 

[gwenmead]

Has anybody posting here seen the Animatrix? A couple of animations from the collection address this very issue.

My question as to whether any being should be given full human rights is whether or not they're sentient. It has nothing to do with being comprised of organic tissue, or possessing DNA or not; I say that if a being is aware of its own existence, aware of its own thoughts, aware of its own self as separate from others, and so on, then it is a being capable of independent thought and deserves the same rights as any other sentient being. Its construction out of minerals and/or plastic is immaterial.

Just mah $.02, not adjusted for inflation.

 

[Lifesaver]

Can these rights be legitimately removed? For example, if there is a right to life, can God, for example, legitimately remove that right?

Yes.
Rights are goods that people have. Many times it is a good thing to take them away; for instance, a criminal loses his right to come and go freely. Though it is something men are entitled to, in order so that justice may take place, the criminal is rightly deprived of his right.

 

[Anti-Fear]

At this point everything considered alive by science has its own DNA code. These things can be intelligent, unintelligent, sentient, or not sentient.

You can program a computer to do certain tasks, but it doesn't mean it has feelings, because MACHINES, that are programmed by humans, are tools, not sentient beings.

I understand that it is entriquing to read some Isaac Asimov and think "What if?" "What if?", but we can extrapolate anything. Many of these hypothetical situations are proven to be impossible by science.

Should anything have rights? Do humans deserve to have rights?
I believe no.
Why? Because giving people rights is what society chooses to do.
From CHristian viewpoint I can say that God owns people since he created them, so they dont have any rights that God cannot "violate".

 

[David Gould]

Yes.
Rights are goods that people have. Many times it is a good thing to take them away; for instance, a criminal loses his right to come and go freely. Though it is something men are entitled to, in order so that justice may take place, the criminal is rightly deprived of his right.

Doesn't this make it a privilige, not a right? In other words, it is something granted by society and which can be withdrawn at socities pleasure. This is why I find rights language so confusing and difficult to deal with. I guess it comes down to this: what is the practical difference between a right and a privilege?

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Let's just not be stupid enough to try to create sentient robots and avoid the problem altogether.

 

[Lifesaver]

Doesn't this make it a privilige, not a right? In other words, it is something granted by society and which can be withdrawn at socities pleasure. This is why I find rights language so confusing and difficult to deal with.

Rights are not granted by society; they arise from the natural law. Society ought to preserve rights.

I guess it comes down to this: what is the practical difference between a right and a privilege?

The difference lies on whether they are essential or not to the accomplishment of their possessor's end. Let me explain this better:
The end of human life is happiness. And not the "happiness" of a pig or of a dog, but the happiness of a man, that is reached through the use of reason (natural happiness, imperfect) and with faith and worshipping of God (supernatural happiness, perfect).
To achieve happiness, men need many things: they need to live, they need health, food, they need to be able to choose where they go, they need to own things, to interact with others, to learn, etc. Those who are deprived of one or many of these will be severely hindered in his strive for natural happiness.

(and here I make a parenthesis: many people give up some of those so that they may better achieve perfect happiness; this is not wrong at all; though natural and perfect happiness are not in conflict with one another, man's fallen state makes him prone to value things wrongly, and thus the search for natural happiness will often hinder that for supernatural happiness; and notice that many men go even further in their error, by valuing an animal's happiness, mainly bodily pleasure, before the higher happiness that consists in living according to reason).

In the case of a class, the right is essential for accomplishing the end of that class. For example, a teacher has the right to give orders and to be obeyed inside the classroom by his students; without this, he could not teach.

Now, privileges are extra goods, not necessary to the well-accomplishment of the task. A teacher may have the privilege to eat for free in the cafeteria.

A privilege may even be unjust, as when someone has the privilege to order people to be killed. A right, on the other hand, is never unjust per se, though it may be just to take someone's rights away, for the sake of justice, or trampled in extreme cases and emergencies.