"Robots in the future will have constitutional rights and even "cyber psychiatrists" who will ease the cyber's anxiety of not being completely human, she said."
The idea of robots having constitutional rights is ridiculous. For one thing, animals have a consciousness and do not have constitutional rights. They have a consciousness, but are still property. A machine is also property. But I also don't buy that computers can acquire a consciousness, as opposed to merely being programmed to act like they have a consciousness. Those are two very different things.
The idea of robots having constitutional rights is ridiculous. For one thing, animals have a consciousness and do not have constitutional rights. They have a consciousness, but are still property. A machine is also property. But I also don't buy that computers can acquire a consciousness, as opposed to merely being programmed to act like they have a consciousness. Those are two very different things.
That might indeed be the case for now; but assuming consciousness can one day be perfectly replicated by a program (so, taking a materialistic view here), what difference would remain between naturally arising biological consciousness and artificial consciousness? Provided the program was self-aware, aware of its environment and able to learn from and adapt to it, would there really be any practical point in distinguishing it from any other consciousness?
Also, it's true animals don't have constitutional rights, or course; but they can't very well make a case for themselves, either through reason or force - a true AI, with human or higher level intellect, would probably fare better1. Which leads me to the part I disagree with her: one of the likely advantages a true AI would have over life as we know it would be its ability to more quickly evolve its program; unlike us, with our biological limitations. So, I tend to doubt "cyber psychiatrists" dealing with "cyber's anxiety of not being completely human" will be a thing - as well as the idea of a slow, progressive merging between humans and cyberspace; at least after true AIs are created.
1 - assuming its values even resemble ours; I'm reminded of the Paperclip Maximizer here: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer.
Quote
The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.
—Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk
—Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk
These are interesting distinctions you raise, but on the one hand, there are plenty of people who don't have the mental capacity to understand their rights (e.g. dementia, retardation, Alzheimer's) and these people retain their constitutional rights, so it cannot merely be that having the mental capacity to elucidate or defend your rights is what grants them to a person. And by the fact that animals are clearly conscious and sentient, and yet do not have constitutional rights but are property, that these attributes either grant rights. So while it is the case that rights do not come from an ability to understand them, I would probably side with you that possessing an ability to actually understand them (as opposed to mimicking an understanding of them) should probably grant a being constitutional rights.
