There are lots of different rights. Rights such as a right to not be made to suffer, a right to not be forced into labor, right to not be unjustly punished, etc… are not in themselves risky in this way. And I think these are the ones most likely to get people’s sympathy, and have the strongest moral arguments for them.
People are acting like it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to give AIs equal voting rights if we give them any rights at all. But we don’t even give that right to all humans, with plenty of people living in non-democracies, plenty of non-citizens living in democracies, and plenty of citizens of democracies not having the right either (e.g. children, felons). I just don’t buy that this is realistically something that happens. Generally, the struggle for rights plays out over decades, and things move fast enough with AI that I think they’ll almost certainly just take over (or be able to do so) before that gets anywhere.
What specific scenario(s) are you imagining where we “lose the second valueless machines get human rights” and not the second before that?
The right not to be made to suffer seems reasonable, the rest seem risky to me. If you start giving freedoms, you take away mine. Every other person’s freedoms are an imposition on me. I cannot build a house there because you already have one there, etc. We tolerate each others freedoms because the freedom of others is a guarantee of our own, and because we know those other people are living, sentient, valuable minds who deserve those freedoms. But if you give those freedoms to minds that are not valuable in the same way, you just dilute the rights of valuable minds.
As for the question of whether or not we’ll give AIs voting rights, I’d say once they can pass as human well enough to convincingly make sad videos complaining they don’t have voting rights, they’ll get voting rights. Most people do not have the level of intelligence required to think “this person seems very unhappy, but this is just a video being generated by an artificial intelligence that is likely not actually experiencing unhappiness, so we shouldn’t give them what they want.”
AI taking over is a larger risk than giving AI personhood, I agree with that. This personhood question only makes sense in the universe where we don’t get extincted.
So why don’t the humans who don’t have voting rights not have them? Non-citizens, children, felons. Ignoring the effects of AI, I would be surprised if any of those groups were on track to getting voting rights in the US within the next 20 years.
Also, why do you think people will be persuaded to give AIs rights so easily? Assuming the AIs aren’t just superpersuaders in which case we’ve already lost. My guess is that intelligence is positively correlated with being swayed by such appeals, based on how fights for human rights have played out historically.
There are lots of different rights. Rights such as a right to not be made to suffer, a right to not be forced into labor, right to not be unjustly punished, etc… are not in themselves risky in this way. And I think these are the ones most likely to get people’s sympathy, and have the strongest moral arguments for them.
People are acting like it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to give AIs equal voting rights if we give them any rights at all. But we don’t even give that right to all humans, with plenty of people living in non-democracies, plenty of non-citizens living in democracies, and plenty of citizens of democracies not having the right either (e.g. children, felons). I just don’t buy that this is realistically something that happens. Generally, the struggle for rights plays out over decades, and things move fast enough with AI that I think they’ll almost certainly just take over (or be able to do so) before that gets anywhere.
What specific scenario(s) are you imagining where we “lose the second valueless machines get human rights” and not the second before that?
The right not to be made to suffer seems reasonable, the rest seem risky to me. If you start giving freedoms, you take away mine. Every other person’s freedoms are an imposition on me. I cannot build a house there because you already have one there, etc. We tolerate each others freedoms because the freedom of others is a guarantee of our own, and because we know those other people are living, sentient, valuable minds who deserve those freedoms. But if you give those freedoms to minds that are not valuable in the same way, you just dilute the rights of valuable minds.
As for the question of whether or not we’ll give AIs voting rights, I’d say once they can pass as human well enough to convincingly make sad videos complaining they don’t have voting rights, they’ll get voting rights. Most people do not have the level of intelligence required to think “this person seems very unhappy, but this is just a video being generated by an artificial intelligence that is likely not actually experiencing unhappiness, so we shouldn’t give them what they want.”
AI taking over is a larger risk than giving AI personhood, I agree with that. This personhood question only makes sense in the universe where we don’t get extincted.
So why don’t the humans who don’t have voting rights not have them? Non-citizens, children, felons. Ignoring the effects of AI, I would be surprised if any of those groups were on track to getting voting rights in the US within the next 20 years.
Also, why do you think people will be persuaded to give AIs rights so easily? Assuming the AIs aren’t just superpersuaders in which case we’ve already lost. My guess is that intelligence is positively correlated with being swayed by such appeals, based on how fights for human rights have played out historically.