Robot rights should we grant artificial intelligence human rights

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Robot rights: Should we grant artificial intelligence human rights

The European Union Parliament and several other authors propose a controversial idea to make robots legal agents.

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Quantumrun Foresight
February 3, 2022

Insight summary

The debate over granting rights to robots is heating up, with some arguing that protecting robots could indirectly safeguard human rights, while others contend that robots, regardless of their intelligence, are merely machines. The potential implications of robot rights are vast, ranging from shifts in societal norms and labor markets to new legislative challenges and environmental concerns. However, the future remains uncertain, with potential risks including the erosion of human rights and the possibility of harmful actions by autonomous robots.

Robot rights context

One core insight from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab is that as human-like robots become more advanced and deeply integrated into society, it is essential to keep an eye on people who become accustomed to misbehaving with them. For example, allowing people to mistreat robots might encourage bad habits, potentially conditioning them to more easily mistreat human beings. From this perspective, protecting the rights of robots might indirectly defend the rights of humans.

However, several engineers, scientists, and AI experts have signed an open letter to oppose this proposal, stating that robots are just machines, no matter how intelligent and autonomous they might be or become. This group further argues that AIs cannot match humans' cognitive level or consciousness and thus should not be provided with the same rights as human beings.

This interdependence could come at a cost. In failing to establish a legal frame around artificial intelligence, humans are making themselves vulnerable to the consequences of the potential emergence of robots' rights on their legal system. The decision of the European Union (EU) to regulate artificial intelligence before it surpasses the current laws and regulations shows foresight.

Disruptive impact

Rights are complex and manifold. Granting rights to robots and AI may also help rewrite the future; it may open doors to a coming time where speciesism is curtailed and humans reevaluate their assumption that the world revolves around them. Also, expanding human rights to robots/AI could invite a new appreciation and understanding of the intersecting rights and responsibilities between humans and machines.

Alternatively, it can also be argued that granting such rights may limit humans to the rights they have granted to AI or make some humans collateral damage in the new social order they have created. While change is a certainty, its contours are not. Furthermore, some people are concerned about the dangerous things that AI robots are potentially capable of in the future, and granting them legal status may mean giving them the freedom to pursue such dangerous acts.

In a future scenario where human rights are bestowed on AI robots, this could lead to three novel possibilities. In certain situations, robots may have their human rights recognized before actual human beings have such rights acknowledged. Governments may negotiate the prospect of conflicting claims of human rights violations between humans and robots. However, linking human rights with robots may leave such rights obsolete.

Implications of robot rights

Wider implications of robot rights may include:

Facilitating further societal integration of AI and robots into private lives and in the public and private sectors.
Helping protect robotic property belonging to private corporations.
Limiting the use or exploitation of AI and robots in various private sectors and military applications.
New opportunities in robot maintenance, programming, and ethical oversight.
A profound change in societal norms and values, as humans grapple with the ethical implications of interacting with sentient machines, fostering a more inclusive society that extends empathy and respect to non-human entities.
Governments grappling with the need to regulate these entities, leading to new legislation and policy debates that challenge traditional notions of citizenship and rights.
Shifts in population dynamics as robots receive labor rights and take over more human jobs, leading to changes in migration patterns, urbanization trends, and age distributions.
The increasing normalization of robots resulting in increased e-waste and energy consumption to manufacture and maintain these machines.