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Author Topic: AI Rights  (Read 26080 times)

Naturegirl1999

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #150 on: November 21, 2020, 09:50:04 pm »


thanks

yeah thats also true

if me saying that really made you upset im sorry it was meant to be a joke

last time i made a joke like this the guy revealed he had really bad depression and suicidal issues so i just wanted to make sure

(Yeah no I'm fucking with you, its cool)
where is the upset ness interpretation, yes a thanks can be true, which is a thing I’ve not seen someone say. Can someone explain why there would be an upset-ness interpretation?

Exactly.  What is a person, and what is an animal?
Animals are multicellular mobile organisms which are heterotrophs. Humans are part of this group. Person seems to (currently) only be applied to humans. Humans are currently the only type of entity with rights, as we gave ourselves them. By this, I propose that for this discussion, person would be an entity with rights. If anyone would like clarification on my thought processes, just ask
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ArchimedesWojak

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« Reply #151 on: November 21, 2020, 10:13:58 pm »

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« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 08:54:59 am by ArchimedesWojak »
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YET ANOTHER DATA-COLLECTION THREAD FROM MR. "NOT FEDERAL AUTHORITIES."
ArchimedesWojak is very militant against zoophilia due to his deeply held religious beliefs.

feelotraveller

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #152 on: November 21, 2020, 10:38:26 pm »

Exactly.  What is a person, and what is an animal?
Animals are multicellular mobile organisms which are heterotrophs. Humans are part of this group. Person seems to (currently) only be applied to humans. Humans are currently the only type of entity with rights, as we gave ourselves them. By this, I propose that for this discussion, person would be an entity with rights. If anyone would like clarification on my thought processes, just ask

I think to be precise that it is necessary to additionally specify that the person be a 'natural person' as opposed to a 'legal person'.  The latter is a visage put on by corporations and govenments for example, but not the bearer of human rights.
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Starver

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #153 on: November 22, 2020, 10:49:27 am »

Dave is somewhat human

Mr Roboto is that one robot you made in your high school robotics class thats basically R.O.B from Nintendo but made with Legos, A few wires, A shitty motor, some wheels and very basic programming
Ah, I see
Well, I don't. The latter is more obviously a human affectation than the only thing an R2 unit can whistle at you[1] when you ask its name. In a Turing Test scenario, I'd not be thinking "Ha! That proves you're not human", if that was the response (for either), but that the human is trying too hard to win a Reverse-Turing/prop up their slightly deficient competitor. (In fact, an AI maybe should have that facility to utterly muddy the waters...)

[1] And if it is entirely binary, that doesn't stop it being less human than a telegraph operator of times past, at the other end of a morse-key. And because a TT isn't face-to-face you don't even need the whole synth-human/android thing to 'try to be human', just the same access to a bidirectional communications line, however you jury-rig it up to your respective human and non-human minds (e.g. Stephen Hawking could have participated with his twitch-operated software.
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Reelya

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #154 on: November 22, 2020, 11:56:58 am »

I remember seeing a documentary or TV show asking the question of whether an animal can be considered a 'person' and every expert they interviewed scoffed at the idea and 'of course not'. However, they seemed pretty short on actual coherent arguments about why this is the case, other than pointing at some arbitrary definition of 'person' which excluded animal by design.

The problem is that merely defining categories doesn't actually tell us anything or prove anything about other qualities that entities in those categories possess. It's perfectly fine to define a person as being a human, that's just making them synonyms: all humans are people and only humans can be a person - merely a synonym at that point. But ... you don't actually prove anything about animals vs humans by merely defining "person" to mean human, but it's easy to fool ourselves otherwise.

For example, if you raise a chimp among humans, the chimp definitely considers themselves as being a person, and can reason to an extent about their relationship to other persons, while the humans involved could also easily consider the chimp a person they live with. But those 'experts' would tell everyone involved including the chimp that they're merely confused about the chimp's personhood. So that leads to a contradiction - any entity capable of believing itself to be a person should probably be considered a person. Whether other people think you're a person isn't really a valid metric. For example, I could fool you that a bot is a person or a well made fake person is a real person. But, that's definitely less of a person than a chimp you raised as a child. The fallback for anti animals-are-people people seems to be that an animal doesn't have legal recognition as being a person, however if you had legal recognition of a cardboard cutout as a person and all the paperwork worked out and the courts agreed, nobody would actually accept that this is a "real" person, so we have a concept of "real person" that supercedes any legal personhood, which shows that personhood does not flow from the legal representation.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2020, 12:15:18 pm by Reelya »
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Naturegirl1999

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #155 on: November 22, 2020, 12:16:51 pm »

Dave is somewhat human

Mr Roboto is that one robot you made in your high school robotics class thats basically R.O.B from Nintendo but made with Legos, A few wires, A shitty motor, some wheels and very basic programming
Ah, I see
Well, I don't. The latter is more obviously a human affectation than the only thing an R2 unit can whistle at you[1] when you ask its name. In a Turing Test scenario, I'd not be thinking "Ha! That proves you're not human", if that was the response (for either), but that the human is trying too hard to win a Reverse-Turing/prop up their slightly deficient competitor. (In fact, an AI maybe should have that facility to utterly muddy the waters...)

[1] And if it is entirely binary, that doesn't stop it being less human than a telegraph operator of times past, at the other end of a morse-key. And because a TT isn't face-to-face you don't even need the whole synth-human/android thing to 'try to be human', just the same access to a bidirectional communications line, however you jury-rig it up to your respective human and non-human minds (e.g. Stephen Hawking could have participated with his twitch-operated software.
I agree with this as well.
I remember seeing a documentary or TV show asking the question of whether an animal can be considered a 'person' and every expert they interviewed scoffed at the idea and 'of course not'. However, they seemed pretty short on actual coherent arguments about why this is the case, other than pointing at some arbitrary definition of 'person' which excluded animal by design.

The problem is that merely defining categories doesn't actually tell us anything or prove anything about other qualities that entities in those categories possess. It's perfectly fine to define a person as being a human, that's just making them synonyms: all humans are people and only humans can be a person - merely a synonym at that point. But ... you don't actually prove anything about animals vs humans by merely definition "person" to mean human, but it's easy to fool ourselves otherwise.

For example, if you raise a chimp among humans, the chimp definitely considers themselves as being a person, and can reason to an extent about their relationship to other persons, while the humans involved could also easily consider the chimp a person they live with. But those 'experts' would tell everyone involved including the chimp that they're merely confused about the chimp's personhood. So that leads to a contradiction - any entity capable of believing itself to be a person should probably be considered a person. Whether other people think you're a person isn't really a valid metric. For example, I could fool you that a bot is a person or a well made fake person is a real person. But, that's definitely less of a person than a chimp you raised as a child.
Yes, I noticed that most of the person definitions referred to humans by definition. That doesn’t help.
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feelotraveller

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #156 on: November 22, 2020, 01:15:49 pm »

Part of the issue is that personhood is a social definition - as contrasted with the scientific definition of human (or animal).  So a cardboard cut-out fails inasmuch as it cannot fufil the social function of a person.  And again with the 'familiar' chimps, although in some respects they can indeed pass sufficiently, in other respects they fail - say in the understanding presupposed by voting.  There have certainly been times when human beings have been regarded as not being persons - take the European colonization of Australia, the indigenous inhabitants were regarded as no better than animals (and by the by it wasn't until the 1960's that they got the vote).  There are other more chilling examples.  This is one thing theories of human rights attempt to address.  And flipping it around governments are considered to be 'legal persons' inasmuch as they enter into contracts, sign treaties, are held responsible beyond the tenure/existence of the natural persons who sign on their behalf.  If they were not 'persons' then they would not be able to engage with the social world like this.  As such legal definitions do indeed capture something about persons which extends beyond any naive notion of solipsistic sovereignty,
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Rolan7

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #157 on: November 30, 2020, 09:17:38 pm »

Indeed.  So a person who is behind a blind is inhuman.
A person behind a visual block is inhuman.
/doubt

Not to say that synthetic AI should have humanity

I'm only asking us all to have humanity.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2020, 09:21:32 pm by Rolan7 »
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No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

Rolan7

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #158 on: December 03, 2020, 12:02:46 am »

(Apologies for the nonsense argument)
Part of the issue is that personhood is a social definition - as contrasted with the scientific definition of human (or animal).  So a cardboard cut-out fails inasmuch as it cannot fufil the social function of a person.  And again with the 'familiar' chimps, although in some respects they can indeed pass sufficiently, in other respects they fail - say in the understanding presupposed by voting.  There have certainly been times when human beings have been regarded as not being persons - take the European colonization of Australia, the indigenous inhabitants were regarded as no better than animals (and by the by it wasn't until the 1960's that they got the vote).  There are other more chilling examples.  This is one thing theories of human rights attempt to address.  And flipping it around governments are considered to be 'legal persons' inasmuch as they enter into contracts, sign treaties, are held responsible beyond the tenure/existence of the natural persons who sign on their behalf.  If they were not 'persons' then they would not be able to engage with the social world like this.  As such legal definitions do indeed capture something about persons which extends beyond any naive notion of solipsistic sovereignty,
A social definition for personhood implies that we decide what humanity is.

Yes, some of us have tried to define humanity more specifically than humanity.  But we saw that that was wrong.  Many cultures or, I'd argue, intrinsically.  In our hearts.  We rejected that idea.

If something is, by some miracle of science, able to operate among us as well as the least of us...  Must it not be granted rights?  How well must it understand the Rains in Spain before it is one of us?
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

MaxTheFox

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #159 on: December 03, 2020, 01:29:22 am »

Nonhuman species should be given the same rgihts as humans if they're about as or more intelligent than the average human. Since intelligence is difficult to impossible to quantify, the best way to do that would be a "whitelist".
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Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar?

feelotraveller

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #160 on: December 03, 2020, 05:52:42 am »

(Apologies for the nonsense argument)
Part of the issue is that personhood is a social definition - as contrasted with the scientific definition of human (or animal).  So a cardboard cut-out fails inasmuch as it cannot fufil the social function of a person.  And again with the 'familiar' chimps, although in some respects they can indeed pass sufficiently, in other respects they fail - say in the understanding presupposed by voting.  There have certainly been times when human beings have been regarded as not being persons - take the European colonization of Australia, the indigenous inhabitants were regarded as no better than animals (and by the by it wasn't until the 1960's that they got the vote).  There are other more chilling examples.  This is one thing theories of human rights attempt to address.  And flipping it around governments are considered to be 'legal persons' inasmuch as they enter into contracts, sign treaties, are held responsible beyond the tenure/existence of the natural persons who sign on their behalf.  If they were not 'persons' then they would not be able to engage with the social world like this.  As such legal definitions do indeed capture something about persons which extends beyond any naive notion of solipsistic sovereignty,
A social definition for personhood implies that we decide what humanity is.

Yes, some of us have tried to define humanity more specifically than humanity.  But we saw that that was wrong.  Many cultures or, I'd argue, intrinsically.  In our hearts.  We rejected that idea.

If something is, by some miracle of science, able to operate among us as well as the least of us...  Must it not be granted rights?  How well must it understand the Rains in Spain before it is one of us?

Firstly I think part of your confusion arises from using the term 'humanity' ambiguously.  Yes sometimes it is used as a synonym for 'human beings' and at others for a set of virtues that should be extended by (and to) members of the human species. 

Person (personhood) as a concept it is distinct from human being/humanity/homo sapien, even if it largely overlaps and gets used in common parlance as equivalent.  It's not - we would never refer to the American Government as a human being even lthough it is indeed a person.

But no we do not decide what human beings are.  That is a species definition (homo sapiens) which has a scientific rendering.  Specifically it is this the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights references, firstly in the preamble
Quote
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
and then later in the 1st article
Quote
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Personhood on the other hand is a state that although commonly attributed to human beings is not something possessed inherently and uniquely by human beings.  If you want to say that all human beings should be regarded as persons, I'm largely in agreement (there are troubling border cases like abortion, long-term vegative comas, etc. which make me hesitate on immediate absolute agreement) but that is not the way it has been historically constituted.  Similar in this regard is 'citizen' (oh, Glitterhoof  ;)).  And there are 'persons' who are not individual human beings at all.

In fact it is the UDHR which does the heavy lifting of the 'We rejected that idea'* and it does so with reference human beings rather than persons.  (Yes person is used in that document at times as a synonym for individual human being, as is people(s) for collective groups of human beings, but look to the above which precede any invocation of person - the person talk falls back upon the statements about human beings.

Returning to the topic of AI rights the import is that the substrate of human rights is just being human which AI's never will be (they are - presumably - machines and not homo sapiens).  Really the Turing test has so much to answer for in shaping this discourse into 'being able to pass as human'.  If the requirement is 'able to operate among us as well as the least of us' then there are already a multitude of machines that do more than the (long term, irrecoverable) vegative coma patient.  So that seems insufficient.  And how would we apply parts of the UDHR to machines anyway?  For example (article 25)
Quote
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
In other words applying the human centred standards of 'human rights' to 'AI rights' just isn't going to work easily.  And on the other hand stating what the 'operate as well as the least of us' consists of is non-trivial.  Should AI need to possess practical wisdom (phronesis) in addition to instrumental rationality?  What about the ability to experience emotions?  Mortality?  Should they be able to Love?

That said, I'm not against the notion of AI rights.  But I do think that the particular rights that should be given to AI's must be suited to their circumstances and abilities.  And until we get to the point where machine self-awareness arises we are not going to have a solid basis to say what the capabilities and limitations of such a consciousness is.




* More like - we are (slowly) rejecting that idea.
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Rolan7

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #161 on: December 03, 2020, 09:23:59 am »

Firstly I think part of your confusion arises from using the term 'humanity' ambiguously.  Yes sometimes it is used as a synonym for 'human beings' and at others for a set of virtues that should be extended by (and to) members of the human species. 

Person (personhood) as a concept it is distinct from human being/humanity/homo sapien, even if it largely overlaps and gets used in common parlance as equivalent.  It's not - we would never refer to the American Government as a human being even lthough it is indeed a person.
I was about to make a joke about PACs legally being sorta-people, but reread your words.  Excuse me?  The American Government is a person?

I go pretty hard on the idea of certain ideologies meeting the definition of life, but I'm just surprised.
But no we do not decide what human beings are.  That is a species definition (homo sapiens) which has a scientific rendering.  Specifically it is this the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights references, firstly in the preamble
Quote
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
and then later in the 1st article
Quote
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Personhood on the other hand is a state that although commonly attributed to human beings is not something possessed inherently and uniquely by human beings.  If you want to say that all human beings should be regarded as persons, I'm largely in agreement (there are troubling border cases like abortion, long-term vegative comas, etc. which make me hesitate on immediate absolute agreement) but that is not the way it has been historically constituted.  Similar in this regard is 'citizen' (oh, Glitterhoof  ;)).  And there are 'persons' who are not individual human beings at all.
Totally with you here (best horse ;_;) except that I'm still pleasantly surprised at how inclusive your definition of personhood seems to be.
In fact it is the UDHR which does the heavy lifting of the 'We rejected that idea'* and it does so with reference human beings rather than persons.  (Yes person is used in that document at times as a synonym for individual human being, as is people(s) for collective groups of human beings, but look to the above which precede any invocation of person - the person talk falls back upon the statements about human beings.
Thanks for sharing the UN's words, and I do respect them.  However, such decrees are limited.  I don't take the UN's words to positively claim that extraterrestrials or synthetics deserve no rights.  They're just trying to secure basic rights for all the people - AKA humans, currently - here.
Returning to the topic of AI rights the import is that the substrate of human rights is just being human which AI's never will be (they are - presumably - machines and not homo sapiens).  Really the Turing test has so much to answer for in shaping this discourse into 'being able to pass as human'.  If the requirement is 'able to operate among us as well as the least of us' then there are already a multitude of machines that do more than the (long term, irrecoverable) vegative coma patient.  So that seems insufficient.  And how would we apply parts of the UDHR to machines anyway?  For example (article 25)
Quote
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
In other words applying the human centred standards of 'human rights' to 'AI rights' just isn't going to work easily.  And on the other hand stating what the 'operate as well as the least of us' consists of is non-trivial.  Should AI need to possess practical wisdom (phronesis) in addition to instrumental rationality?  What about the ability to experience emotions?  Mortality?  Should they be able to Love?
This is a solid point.  Synthetic people will be different from the people we know.  However, some of us (the "least of us", but not really) already lack emotions or the capacity for love.  Even mortality is not a truly intrinsic property of humanity, any more than a mountain is mortal.  The species has those traits, but not everyone of the species.

I think that ties in to why this issue is so important to me.  I'm concerned about people who are different, because I am... or have been considered... different.  As a result, I don't like to deny rights to any entity that might experience suffering.  I only have rights now because other humans overcame their xenophobia and agreed to treat me as a person.

Maybe I should focus that energy on human beings.  But what is a human?  If neanderthals came back or were rediscovered, they would deserve rights.  And if we humans engineer new beings with a similar capacity for thought, which is only a matter of studying our own brains, then surely they will deserve rights as well.  One could justifiably put them in the taxonomy next to us, as homo synthetic or such.  Do they lose all rights because they're a different species?
That said, I'm not against the notion of AI rights.  But I do think that the particular rights that should be given to AI's must be suited to their circumstances and abilities.  And until we get to the point where machine self-awareness arises we are not going to have a solid basis to say what the capabilities and limitations of such a consciousness is.
Absolutely.  And thanks for your thoughts!
(I'm still curious about your ideas on personhood, actually!  Not challenging, just curious.)
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #162 on: December 03, 2020, 10:02:05 am »

Can it feel pain? Then it should be given rights that protects them from unnecessary harm and cruelty, both physically and psychically. So no rights for AIs.
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MaxTheFox

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #163 on: December 03, 2020, 10:08:22 am »

Can it feel pain? Then it should be given rights that protects them from unnecessary harm and cruelty, both physically and psychically. So no rights for AIs.
What about emotional pain though?
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Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar?

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Re: AI Rights
« Reply #164 on: December 03, 2020, 10:10:39 am »

Emotional pain is a trigger to get an animal to behave a certain way. If it occurs with thought psychopath wouldn't exist.  Why would we program a AI to have that?
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