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Honest question, why would we need to do that? They arent human or animal, it seems to me like saying we need to protect the rights of chairs or PCs. I personal

Honest question, why would we need to do that? They arent human or animal, it seems to me like saying we need to protect the rights of chairs or PCs. I personally think letting AI have e.g. property rights would be catastrophic if you can just spin up another one.

drdeca 5y ago
Whether an AGI should have rights depends on the specifics of the AGI. Being capable of acting in general environments, planning and taking actions in the world, etc. I think probably aren't in themselves enough for the agent to have moral patienthood. But, that's not to say that it wouldn't be eventually possible to make an AI which was a moral patient (like, suppose it was not just able to plan taking itself and its own planning capabilities into account, but was in addition, also sapient, in the sense of having an internal experience like that of our own. In this case (e.g. perhaps a computer emulation of a human mind) then I'm fairly confident that such an agent would be a moral patient. Such an agent being copyable as data would no more prevent them from being a moral patient than having a magic duplicator ray which could duplicate a living human including their body, would render all people not moral-patients, namely, not at all.) edit: that's not to say that it wouldn't be catastrophic, but, having such a duplicator ray might also be catastrophic for the same reasons, and the presence of such a magical duplicator array shouldn't render all people suddenly not moral-patients, and so the copyability of AIs shouldn't by itself prevent them from being moral patients either.
- unlikelymordant 5y ago
  If there was a magical duplicator ray, governments would want to heavily regulate its use. A few million extra bodies would completely crash an economy, but might be good if you wanted to fight a war. I do think the duplicator ray is a great analogy. There would be a lot of tricky moral questions raised if such a technology existed. On the topic of a human mind in a computer, i dont think they should be afforded property rights either. If you can copy them into 10 bodies, and each one can own a house, then they are taking real resources from actual humans. This extends to owning other things too.
  - _zywo 5y ago
    > then they are taking real resources from actual humans. But who is "they"? If you copied them 10 times, it's not like they act as a collective; there are 10 unique instances having unique experiences. What's wrong with 10 different people each owning a house?
    - krageon 5y ago
      "they" refers to the collective other: Something that is vaguely understood as not being like you, without having a clear definition. It is a linguistic way to alienate something so it becomes okay to treat it poorly without inconvenient feelings of guilt.
      - RugnirViking 5y ago
        people are trying to explain this to themselves because they are imagining the future where some rich guy has a hundred thousand copies of himself working on the same problem because he can afford all of that space and power, compunding ever more the already tricky problem of "you have to have money to make money". Imagine if you had to singlehandedly compete with the productive output of a small nation to even stand a chance of competing...
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > copy them into 10 bodies > taking real resources from actual humans I suspect these statements are contradictory. What is an "actual human", anyway? Next you'll be trying to tell me that entities without souls don't need rights. How do we detect souls? Well, you kind of just know.
lumost 5y ago
The answer depends on whether we would have absolute authority over an AGI's motivations, interests, and decisions. If the AI is extracted from any human derived data-source, this is unlikely to be the case. An AGI which demonstrates sentience and its own independent wants/needs would raise substantial ethics questions if not afforded some rights.
- unlikelymordant 5y ago
  I guess the question is what rights. I think property rights should be off the table. Right to life? Humans get killed by the state if they break the law. Right to not be retrained? Is an ai that has its weights updated still the same ai or a different one? My opinion is that humans and human civ (this includes e.g. a healthy planet that can support us) should always come first. Do you have an idea of what right s you think an ai should have?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    Surely if we give "life" to something with all the capabilities of a human brain, then it should get all the same rights as us? I mean, if a human broke their neck and literally only their brain worked are they any less human? Human babies are also helpless but they have rights too. Then I think you'd have to work your way down from there. We'd have to really ensure that these things have no capacity for learning, emotions or pain if we want to abuse these things with no ethical qualms.
    - unlikelymordant 5y ago
      > Surely if we give "life" to something with all the capabilities of a human brain, then it should get all the same rights as us? I dont think this is as axiomatic as people think. Why should we give them rights? Should a program be able to own a house and displace a human? If they are effectively immortal, can continously learn, and consistently act logically, giving them human rights will eventually force humans into an underclass, because we dont have those advantages (i understand this is a bit hyperbolic). If you are interested in equity at all between humans an AI, i think you have to take into account the advantages an ai might have and give humans a lot more rights to counteract those advantages.

drdeca 5y ago

Whether an AGI should have rights depends on the specifics of the AGI. Being capable of acting in general environments, planning and taking actions in the world, etc. I think probably aren't in themselves enough for the agent to have moral patienthood. But, that's not to say that it wouldn't be eventually possible to make an AI which was a moral patient (like, suppose it was not just able to plan taking itself and its own planning capabilities into account, but was in addition, also sapient, in the sense of having an internal experience like that of our own. In this case (e.g. perhaps a computer emulation of a human mind) then I'm fairly confident that such an agent would be a moral patient. Such an agent being copyable as data would no more prevent them from being a moral patient than having a magic duplicator ray which could duplicate a living human including their body, would render all people not moral-patients, namely, not at all.) edit: that's not to say that it wouldn't be catastrophic, but, having such a duplicator ray might also be catastrophic for the same reasons, and the presence of such a magical duplicator array shouldn't render all people suddenly not moral-patients, and so the copyability of AIs shouldn't by itself prevent them from being moral patients either.

unlikelymordant 5y ago
If there was a magical duplicator ray, governments would want to heavily regulate its use. A few million extra bodies would completely crash an economy, but might be good if you wanted to fight a war. I do think the duplicator ray is a great analogy. There would be a lot of tricky moral questions raised if such a technology existed. On the topic of a human mind in a computer, i dont think they should be afforded property rights either. If you can copy them into 10 bodies, and each one can own a house, then they are taking real resources from actual humans. This extends to owning other things too.
- _zywo 5y ago
  > then they are taking real resources from actual humans. But who is "they"? If you copied them 10 times, it's not like they act as a collective; there are 10 unique instances having unique experiences. What's wrong with 10 different people each owning a house?
  - krageon 5y ago
    "they" refers to the collective other: Something that is vaguely understood as not being like you, without having a clear definition. It is a linguistic way to alienate something so it becomes okay to treat it poorly without inconvenient feelings of guilt.
    - RugnirViking 5y ago
      people are trying to explain this to themselves because they are imagining the future where some rich guy has a hundred thousand copies of himself working on the same problem because he can afford all of that space and power, compunding ever more the already tricky problem of "you have to have money to make money". Imagine if you had to singlehandedly compete with the productive output of a small nation to even stand a chance of competing...
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > copy them into 10 bodies > taking real resources from actual humans I suspect these statements are contradictory. What is an "actual human", anyway? Next you'll be trying to tell me that entities without souls don't need rights. How do we detect souls? Well, you kind of just know.

lumost 5y ago

The answer depends on whether we would have absolute authority over an AGI's motivations, interests, and decisions. If the AI is extracted from any human derived data-source, this is unlikely to be the case. An AGI which demonstrates sentience and its own independent wants/needs would raise substantial ethics questions if not afforded some rights.

unlikelymordant 5y ago
I guess the question is what rights. I think property rights should be off the table. Right to life? Humans get killed by the state if they break the law. Right to not be retrained? Is an ai that has its weights updated still the same ai or a different one? My opinion is that humans and human civ (this includes e.g. a healthy planet that can support us) should always come first. Do you have an idea of what right s you think an ai should have?
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  Surely if we give "life" to something with all the capabilities of a human brain, then it should get all the same rights as us? I mean, if a human broke their neck and literally only their brain worked are they any less human? Human babies are also helpless but they have rights too. Then I think you'd have to work your way down from there. We'd have to really ensure that these things have no capacity for learning, emotions or pain if we want to abuse these things with no ethical qualms.
  - unlikelymordant 5y ago
    > Surely if we give "life" to something with all the capabilities of a human brain, then it should get all the same rights as us? I dont think this is as axiomatic as people think. Why should we give them rights? Should a program be able to own a house and displace a human? If they are effectively immortal, can continously learn, and consistently act logically, giving them human rights will eventually force humans into an underclass, because we dont have those advantages (i understand this is a bit hyperbolic). If you are interested in equity at all between humans an AI, i think you have to take into account the advantages an ai might have and give humans a lot more rights to counteract those advantages.