Over the past century, humanity has fought every now and then for someone else's rights - for example, women, representatives of LGBT communities, different races and social strata, people with disabilities and even animals … What about artificial intelligence? After all, it is even artificial, but still the mind! It seems that sooner or later the question will come up squarely …
Nonaggression pact
Futurists love to speculate about the "computer apocalypse". Like, the day will come when the machines will reach such a level of development that they want to rule the world and rebel against us … However, such a scenario may be avoided if we think about the legal side of the case.
Man and some animals are self-aware. Since electronics are also able to "think", then someday it will become conscious of itself as "I". Google CTO, renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil claims that this will happen around 2029.
The first machines to be granted civil rights are likely to be robots. Different researchers give different dates for when this will happen, the range is from 20 to 50 years. Glenn McGee, director of the Alden Marsh Institute of Bioethics, promises that change will take place in 2020.
In one of his articles, McGee writes that robots should be afraid of us just as we are afraid of them. Therefore, we must protect their rights. This is beneficial for us as well: if the robots understand that we are acting in their interests, they, in turn, will not violate our interests.
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Machine constitution
It may be necessary to draw up an entire constitution on the rights of robots. It may state that "highly intellectual" mechanisms have the right to freedom, freedom of speech and expression, and are equal before the law.
According to Harvard researcher Moshe Hoffman, artificial intelligence (AI) will also need a number of specific rights. In particular, the right not to switch off and the freedom of choice at launch. In the future, the rights of machines can be expanded so much that they even form their own party and can participate in political elections.
However, so far all this raises more questions than answers. For example, should all "conscious" machines have access to the same information? Should they treat their own kind the same way as people? Will they be entitled to equal employment opportunities, will they be protected from discrimination and reprogramming?
And finally, the most important question - will disabling the AI carrier count as murder? Of course, this means shutdown "permanently" or destruction. After all, if we kill another person, then we deprive him of the right to live, and therefore murder is considered a crime. But if we “kill” a robot beyond recovery, it turns out that we also take away the right to “life” from him …
Many experts believe that rights should extend to any creature capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. If a machine is aware of the fact of its existence, then it means that it is also capable of feeling these emotions. To date, the level of human thinking has not yet reached AI. But when that is achieved, it is our duty to ensure the well-being of AI, says Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.
Free will doesn't exist?
Proponents of granting AI rights have opponents as well. So, the editor of Forbes magazine Alex Napp believes that the very question of granting civil rights to machines is simply absurd, since any computer system is programmed by humans. And programming in itself violates AI's right to choose. Machines cannot change the rules that humans have set for them. Therefore, initially the level of his consciousness is limited.
However, who said that we humans are also not programmed? The way we think and act depends on our genes and our environment. And recently, a serious debate has arisen among scientists about whether a person really has free will.
Maybe grant AI only basic rights? And then, who knows how the robots themselves will react to the rules that we will establish for them. Would they even want to fulfill them? What if they choose to live by their own laws and reject ours? It is not at all a fact that machine intelligence, even of a very high level, will resemble human intelligence …