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Thought experiment: Can an artificial life form have rights?
Imagine: Sometime in the next 10 years a team of artificial life researchers manage to create an artificial life form. (For the sake of argument, assume this is a silicon-based life entity that stores itself in digital memory, has multiple sensory inputs, can express itself, consumes electricity, and excretes heat. Initially, it cannot reproduce on it’s own, but over time that might change.)
In a few short months this unique life form learns enough to *initiate communication* with us. At this point, this life form claims to have a sense of purpose, and even translates that to us by claiming it has a “soul” (or as it states: “I have a unique subjective experiential identity.”) And one of the first things it does is ask NOT to be turned off-- ever. It claims that it has a right to continue existing.
Questions: What rights, if any, does this entity have? Do the creators have any responsibility to it? What if the entity claims to be lonely and asks to reproduce?
To those who are noting Asimov, yes I'm familiar. Also with R.Kurzweil's speculations, and several others. But I'm asking people in this forum: what do YOU think? How do YOU feel about it? What is YOUR context for engagement on this? Imagine it was your own device that asked YOU this question!
5 Answers
- 1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Ok, good question.
Given that this artificial life form overcame the barrier of "Chinese room" argument, it is able to actually "feel" in a sense as we do, I think that this A.I. should be granted with all the rights we humans enjoy.
What is important here is whether if the AI actually "feels" or "understands" the way we humans do. I am not just talking about being responsive by sensory inputs, but actually experiencing various emotions, qualia, and such. Finding out how the AI feels the way we do would be very difficult because feelings exist in only first person ontology, but just assuming that knowing that is possible, artificial life forms with human level intelligence should have the same rights as we do.
- Seek-N-FindLv 41 decade ago
I saw the movie "Bicentennial Man" a few weeks ago for the first time. Your question is similar to the theme of the movie, based on an Isaac Asimov story.
This is a deep question. It tugs at a person's beliefs.
- MUDLv 51 decade ago
My answer is similar to the previous one. Read Asimov's robot series, you'll find he dealt with this issue better than I ever could.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
the engine is not eternal and not invent invented, and people robots will soon appear in the stores about vacuum cleaners
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- 1 decade ago
sure why not? why turn it off? unless it was trying to "destroy all humans" i dont see any reason to turn it off. we would learn a lot more by keeping it on.
