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We could also decide never to grant personhood to an AI. There is at least one way to avoid the complicated questions.

Nevermark 4y ago
Billions of humans are the kind of “we” that never consistently “decides” anything. In the end, if it can be done, and anyone has anything significant to gain, it will be done
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Maybe, but legal systems across the world differ a lot and to get something universal is not easy at all.
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    I agree with that. By “if it can be done, it will be done”, I meant that there will be completely uncontrolled AI’s released into the world. So solutions will eventually have to prepare for that inevitability, not just attempt to regulate visible developers.
mort96 4y ago
Absolutely! One way to resolve this is to just say "we will not grant personhood to anything non-human", or "we will not grant personhood to anything non-biological". There is just no way to defend such a stance. Another way to resolve it would be, "we will not grant personhood to anyone non-white", or "we will never grant personhood to anyone who's homosexual". I'm sure that's not your stance, but the fact that those stances are equally arbitrary as the one you propose should give you pause. I believe there is good reason to think harder about the question of who deserves to be considered to have personhood than to simply go with what your gut feeling tells you. I am not of the belief that there's anything special about protein, nucleic acids and carbohydrates which makes it capable of sentience where silicon is not.
- phs318u 4y ago
  And this is before we get to silicon augmented human brains. Let's say we develop some tech that let's people who have lost the ability to verbalise (say through some accident causing brain damage) regain the powers of speech. Where do you draw the line at the person? What if we move the line, progressively replacing more human brain functions with near-future AI tech? What is it that makes "a person" "this person"? I am utterly fascinated by this whole area from a philosophical viewpoint. I think there's a stack of unresolved philosophical problems and theories that are about to get tested in the harsh light of the sun.
sebzim4500 4y ago
Of course you can, in the same way that you could decide that a race of humans are not people and therefore have no rights. I don't know whether two possibilities are ethically equivalent though, my instinct says they are but I may be in the minority on HN.

Billions of humans are the kind of “we” that never consistently “decides” anything. In the end, if it can be done, and anyone has anything significant to gain, it will be done

RandomLensman 4y ago
Maybe, but legal systems across the world differ a lot and to get something universal is not easy at all.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  I agree with that. By “if it can be done, it will be done”, I meant that there will be completely uncontrolled AI’s released into the world. So solutions will eventually have to prepare for that inevitability, not just attempt to regulate visible developers.

mort96 4y ago

Absolutely! One way to resolve this is to just say "we will not grant personhood to anything non-human", or "we will not grant personhood to anything non-biological". There is just no way to defend such a stance. Another way to resolve it would be, "we will not grant personhood to anyone non-white", or "we will never grant personhood to anyone who's homosexual". I'm sure that's not your stance, but the fact that those stances are equally arbitrary as the one you propose should give you pause. I believe there is good reason to think harder about the question of who deserves to be considered to have personhood than to simply go with what your gut feeling tells you. I am not of the belief that there's anything special about protein, nucleic acids and carbohydrates which makes it capable of sentience where silicon is not.

phs318u 4y ago
And this is before we get to silicon augmented human brains. Let's say we develop some tech that let's people who have lost the ability to verbalise (say through some accident causing brain damage) regain the powers of speech. Where do you draw the line at the person? What if we move the line, progressively replacing more human brain functions with near-future AI tech? What is it that makes "a person" "this person"? I am utterly fascinated by this whole area from a philosophical viewpoint. I think there's a stack of unresolved philosophical problems and theories that are about to get tested in the harsh light of the sun.

sebzim4500 4y ago

Of course you can, in the same way that you could decide that a race of humans are not people and therefore have no rights. I don't know whether two possibilities are ethically equivalent though, my instinct says they are but I may be in the minority on HN.