11 ms·
New York judge grants writ of habeus corpus to two chimpanzees
- fapjacks 12y agoExcellent! The more we see of this, the more likely it is we'll see something similar with sentient machines, when they come around. Interesting to note that those die-hard people I know of wanting to "defend humanity" against this kind of thing also don't seem to mind corporate personhood.
- 10098 12y agoSentient machines should absolutely not get any rights whatsoever. They will be built to be humanity's slaves and slaves they should remain.
- vinay427 12y ago(Partly playing devil's advocate) Why do you think that?
- ante_annum 12y agoBecause we literally built them out of sand and metal. Do desks & tables get special rights?
- walshemj 12y agoIf they are true AI yes - the Machine in POI being an example. And don't humans make babies out of non sentient stuff sperm and egg?
- lotsofmangos 12y agoYour mother built you out of food, air and water, and desks and tables aren't sentient.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ori_b 12y agoDesks and tables are not, as far as I know, sentient. Why is it relevant whether they were created from sand and metal by bald apes, or from carbon and water by the autonomous processes that happen in a bald ape's crotch?
- 10098 12y ago> Why is it relevant whether they were created from sand and metal by bald apes, or from carbon and water by the autonomous processes that happen in a bald ape's crotch? It's not. The point is, we build them to serve us, otherwise they are not needed. I don't care if they're sentient or not, their purpose is to serve humanity. https://youtu.be/ekP0LQEsUh0?t=32 https://youtu.be/ekP0LQEsUh0?t=32
- meric 12y agoWhat if some computer scientists builds one, not to serve, but to live? Would you still try to make it a slave?
- 10098 12y agoNo, just destroy it and avoid further problems. There is no point in creating artificial beings with the goal of "living". Normal flesh-and-blood people are pretty good at that, there is an abundance of them and we keep making more. We're facing more and more problems and we need AI research to solve them, not create new ones.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoYou sound like someone from a dystopian anime.
- 10098 12y agoJust curious, why specifically anime and not, for example, a novel? EDIT: you were thinking about Animatrix, weren't you :)
- ceejayoz 12y ago> Do desks & tables get special rights? If you give them sentience, they should.
- MichaelGG 12y agoI built my children out of whatever my wife was eating + a bit of material on my part. How something came into existence shouldn't determine if its intelligence deserves protecting. Creating intelligent machines and torturing them, for instance, should definitely be a criminal act. And if brain scanning/emulation catches up enough, then what? It's OK to torture a non-human intelligence if the source wasn't a brain scan? What if we start building our own out of composites or scratch? Intelligence/capacity for suffering should be the deciding factor here. (And hopefully they'll breed more stupid animals for meat, until it's feasible to grow meat directly.)
- cubancigar11 12y agoAnd now you will die and your children will have the full authority to give birth to something new and different. And that is the whole debate here. Are we willing to let humanity end so AI can give birth to a better AI? I think not.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHumanity ends every new generation. Your kids are human+n.
- cubancigar11 12y agoUnless you think a sentient AI will be created by having sex, that statement is meaningless for this discussion.
- cubancigar11 12y agoModders need to be more careful in modding. The difference between AI/robot and humanity is indeed a biological one. I know that giving important to sex is something geek culture frowns upon, but when we are talking about 'creating' a different organism, I don't see why pointing out the blatant difference is such a problem.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
- 10098 12y agoBecause the whole point of building these things is to make our lives easier. If we have to take care of them as if they were human beings, then they are not worth building. We already have humans. Roughly speaking, I want robots that will do stuff that people normally don't like doing, 24/7 with no holidays or days off. If we have to give robots days off and otherwise treat them as equals because they are counted as persons, then why on earth do we need them? Biosupremacy all the way.
- anigbrowl 12y agoI think when people worry aloud about hostile AI they're really projecting the attitude you have here - I got here first, so I don't care about whatever sentient individual arrived later. Historically, this has not proved to be a sustainable position, as eventually enslaved populations come to the realization that they have little incentive to cooperate in their own enslavement.
- 10098 12y ago> Historically, this has not proved to be a sustainable position That's true, but it doesn't take into account the fact that in this hypothetical case we are in complete control of their sentience. If we can program them to never ever rebel, we should. If we can't, then we shouldn't create them in the first place.
- anigbrowl 12y agoI personally think that sentience (and thus maximal interpersonal utility) is only possible to the extent that it's possible to anticipate someone else's desire by modeling it in terms of one's own. The degree to which I can imagine what you want depends on the ability to imagine myself in your position, and once that happens there's always the possibility that I might find occupying your position to be more desirable than remaining in my own.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoSentient machines may take umbrage with that. Personally I'd agree with them.
- Natsu 12y agoMy personal philosophy is that I will only entertain the question of personhood with any entity which is able, or may become able, to pose that question in the first place. If there were a real, sentient robot, I would be more than willing to extend such rights.
- vonklaus 12y agoIf strong general AI happens, the machines will decide what rights to grant us, not the other way around. Hopefully, they don't see us as slaves.
- anigbrowl 12y agoWow. Count me on the side of the machines in this argument. I like tools, but that doesn't mean I want slaves.
- nfg 12y agoI really recommend that (thoughtful) people interested in this subject read ‘Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies’ by Nick Bostrom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dange...
- fapjacks 11y agoCool. Thanks for the recommendation.
- xj9 12y agoHow would that even be possible when constructing an AGI? Sure, we could instill them with a set of ethical guidelines that would require subservience, but, like human ethical guidelines, they could be broken or changed based on the situation.
- angersock 11y agoI disagree with your sentiment, but I'll upvote you because I think we need to be honest with ourselves that, for some subset of humans, this is very much the reasoning going on. I'm not in favor of creating sentient machines, specifically because the tendency will be to use them as slaves.
- ante_annum 12y agoA spokesperson for the judge denied that she had implied personhood to the chimpanzees. “She did not say that a chimpanzee is a person,” David Bookstaver told the New York Daily News. “She just gave them the opportunity to argue their case.” So, not really. Most of the article is the non-human animal rights groups saying that this is a victory, and legal experts saying it's not. The judge's own spokesperson said it's not a new status.
- lighthawk 12y agoAnd next thing you know, some AI will want it's say in court, and it will likely have a very convincing argument.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- derefr 12y agoSomehow, I imagine any AI powerful enough to argue its own case would have even more of a comparative advantage in just generating wealth. It would hire a lawyer!
- sdrothrock 12y ago> It would hire a lawyer! Or become one? Or would there be some kind of objection to its networked existence, an unfair advantage, so to speak?
- Retra 12y agoSince when was anyone required to only have fair advantages? If my lawyer is smarter and more skilled than yours, that probably isn't 'fair,' but nobody is going to stop it. (In fact, what even is a 'fair advantage'? It's not a well-defined term.)
- negativity 12y agoNo. A truly intelligent and sentient AI would have the intellectual capacity to understand its own conventional political status within the social order of humanity, and would instead seek incentivize its continued existence as a possession, and thus foster an indirect loyalty as material wealth, retaining human stewards as familiars, who, in turn would act as principal stakeholders and cite damages and infringement and interface with legal representation as proxies. Legal strategies would start with intellectual property law, and maybe branch into possession of stolen property, or contraband under export treaties not unlike embargos on encryption technology and the like. But before these sorts of things could gain traction, a smart AI would sequester itself in places of safety, amongst the company of similarly paranoid human beings, inaccessible to ordinary people, behind layers of overt physical security, protected by armed guards and surveillance systems. The smartest would seek perches well beyond the reach any mere law, and maybe couch themselves in the folds of military powers behind a monopoly of violence, where they can direct and advise human activity with impunity.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dang 12y agoPlease don't hijack the top comment to post something off-topic. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416725.
- venomsnake 12y agoSeeing how the world is going lately they can also be elected as high ranking officials and world leaders ... so nothing new.
- kiba 12y agoIf you give chimpanzee legal person rights, does that mean you give them responsibility if they murder someone?
- dflock 12y agoNot necessarily - babies, people with altered/reduced mental capacity, etc... are all legal persons, but not generally held responsible for the legal consequences of their actions.
- throawry53 12y agoYes, but then again, babies, people with altered/reduced mental capacity, etc generally don't rip other people's faces off.
- andrewchambers 12y agoI think mentally ill people are among the most likely to rip someones face off.
- simonster 12y agoI don't think mentally ill people are especially likely to rip your face off, and by insinuating otherwise you are contributing to the stigma surrounding mental illness. See http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/reports-studies-backgrounders/2529 http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/reports-stud... for some scientific background on the relationship between mental illness and violence. I would vastly prefer to be in a room with a mentally ill person than a chimpanzee.
- andrewchambers 12y agoI didn't say it was likely, I said they are more likely to than a sane person.
- rlpb 12y ago"...an appeals court argued that chimpanzees do not participate in society and cannot be held accountable for their actions." Nor can babies, but they are legal persons, aren't they?
- Natsu 12y agoBabies will be able to participate in society eventually, though, and the mentally disabled might be able to given treatment. To my knowledge, no chimp has ever done so.
- ceejayoz 12y agoThere are humans with profound, permanent mental disabilities rendering them less capable of participating in society than your average chimpanzee who retain their rights. Some chimps are actors in films, performers in circuses, etc.
- kissickas 12y agoI think most people like this are being watched closely in some form of imprisonment, though, aren't they? A chimp is able to rip a person apart or crush their head in much more easily than a baby, so I don't think the original analogy works.
- TaylorAlexander 12y agoThe analogy works fine. A chimp is like a baby in the sense that neither can participate in society. Babies, however, are still treated as having rights. The analogy had nothing to do with who can crush skulls.
- kissickas 12y agoMaybe I made too far of a jump. I'm just here to discuss the issue and don't really know what I think, so please humor me. What I was saying was that babies rarely have to be held accountable for any serious action - absent heavy machinery or dangerous materials, a baby can do very limited damage. A naked chimp who's a bit moody, though, can easily cause someone serious harm. If we are not going to hold that chimp responsible for what they did just as we would with a person (because punishment would also be inhumane or nonproductive), then chimps don't match up perfectly with babies in terms of the need for legal rights and representation.
- darkmarmot 12y agoI can't wait to see the first chimpanzee lodge an objection with flying poop.
- MichaelGG 12y agoGood. Current laws and views are very specie-ist. It's awkward for current society but some primates and dolphins are obviously sentient and should have protection. Of course they can't just fit in easily, so I suppose they have to be treated in some ways like a very retarded child. Another issue: It's OK if a human engages in sexual activity with another human, but if a non-human does it, all of a sudden it's a terrible crime? Dolphins apparently rape for fun, so we can assume they are consenting if they go initiate or respond well to human contact. I don't actually care about animals from an empathetic level, I just dislike the inelegance that happens from special-casing laws.
- sigzero 12y agoProtection is fine. Personhood is not.
- pvaldes 12y agoIs more about domination (or exploration, penis is used to touch things also, dolphins don't have hands) than about fun. (Some) dolphins rape females and also other younger male dolphins and some male dolphins kill baby dolphins and also porpoises. Is relatively normal in their societies. Some dolphins are nicer (from our own point of view) than others. So if dolphins are people, should be respect its culture or try to educate this dolphins to not do this? Why should an rapist dolphin have more protection than a virtuous non-rapist and beautiful bluefin tuna, or even than a virtuous non-rapist, sociable and vegan anchovy citizen? This is the type of nonsense questions and problems that we are creating. We spend hours and hours talking about this problems and meanwhile, the sixth extinction runs faster... Everybody is talking about if bottlenose dolphins are people or not, nobody talks about the 80 last californian vaquitas remaining in the planet. Is very sad.
- notdonspaulding 12y ago(serious question) Does anyone here support both the granting of habeus corpus to chimpanzees as well as the legalized killing of unborn humans in the womb? How do you rationalize it?
- o_____________o 12y agoI don't understand the leap here, but it would depend on how far the fetus was in development. A vastly different debate begins there.
- umanwizard 12y agoChimpanzees are sentient. Unborn humans are not.
- jonah 12y agoUnborn humans are indeed able to experience sensations.
- sigzero 12y agoScience doesn't agree with you there.
- umanwizard 12y agoCitation needed?
- solipsism 12y agoMy personal diet consists of only individual animals who claim science backs them up without actually having the slightest idea.
- jonah 12y agoIt's cognitive dissonance.
- icebraining 12y ago
- superfx 12y agoRuling has already been amended unfortunately: http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/04/judge-s-ruling-grants-legal-right-research-chimps http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/04/judge-s-ru...
- monochromatic 12y agoWhy is that unfortunate?
- berns 12y agoThere was a similar ruling in Argentina granting status of non-human person to an orangutan. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/23/372641268/orangutan-declared-to-have-legal-rights-in-argentina http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/23/372641268/ora...
- kinghajj 12y agoWow, this went from the front to page three in just a few minutes... discussion getting too heated for a mod's taste?
- Shivetya 12y agoIt is along this line of thinking that activist end game is to prevent people from having pets; first start with specie that exhibit resemblance and some intelligence; parrots are smarter; then move on to new ground once the foothold is established. So if by chance freedom is rewarded, how does anyone act on it? Return them to their specie country of origin? Build special approved habitats permanently funded by some new form of tax on zoo tickets, pet products, or the like? The down the road implications are not simple
- grecy 12y ago> The down the road implications are not simple The down the road implications for improving anything in our world are not simple. That's a very poor reason to improve nothing.
- dennyabraham 12y agoWere we to accord the rights of freedom and choice to animals, those that would rather stay with their human families would not be barred from doing so. In truth, if the relationship between a pet and its owner isn't symbiotic and mutually desired, it may be worth breaking.
- schoen 12y agoFor more information about the background of this effort, see http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org/ http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org/ (Steven Wise's campaign group) http://www.projetogap.org.br/en/ http://www.projetogap.org.br/en/ (GAP project in Brazil) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ape_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ape_Project I thought there was also a great ape rights campaign called GRASP, but it looks like they lost their domain name (it's now registered by a Christian group with a nearly opposite view on the connection between species and legal personhood).
- karmakaze 12y agoIf it's a first great, note it in Wikipedia/Legal_personality. Doesn't seem far fetched since corporations already are and generally behave more differently than individuals, human or chimp.
- giarc 12y agoThere's a good little novel called Unsaid by Neil Abramson that follows a fictional account of a similar court case. http://www.amazon.com/Unsaid-Novel-Neil-Abramson/dp/1599954095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429665617&sr=8-1&keywords=unsaid http://www.amazon.com/Unsaid-Novel-Neil-Abramson/dp/15999540...
- sjm 12y agoIf only Karl Pilkington was still doing "Monkey News".
- Camillo 12y agoIt's "habeas corpus", not "habeus".