Should Robots Have Rights?, Study notes of Humanities

Download Should Robots Have Rights? and more Study notes Humanities in PDF only on Docsity! Amy Young Should Robots Have Rights? Man is not machine, and machine is not human. In what follows, I will discuss the works of philosophers including Ryder, Foot, Bentham and Singer to explore this, by firstly considering ‘what confers Human Rights?’, in order to consequentially argue that it is logical to conclude that robots should not have rights. Before we begin to explore this question, we must understand exactly what we mean by ‘robot’. The term itself is often misconceived, due to the duality between the literal definition in accordance with current research, and the representation and ideas presented to a large percentage of the population by the film and media industries. Robotics is a fairly modern and rapidly expanding discipline within Engineering, and since the invention of the first so called ‘robot’, in 1954 by American Engineer George Devol, major technological advances have been made over the last 67 years, which is what leads society to question the ethics that coincide with this branch of research and whether robots should have rights. A robot is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as a ‘machine controlled by a computer that is used to perform jobs automatically’. Therefore, from this we are able to divide the field of robotics into two distinct areas, ‘simple robotics’ (that is, without the involvement of Artificial Intelligence (AI)), and ‘AI robotics’. After establishing an exact definition for the subject of this essay, we may begin by first examining the concept of Natural Rights. According to John Locke (1988), ‘humans are born with ‘inalienable’ rights of life, liberty and property’, which can be used as an argument to support greater rights of humans in comparison to animals and specific to this context, robots. However, this is opposed by the idea of Speciesism, which is ‘the unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who are not classified as belonging to one or more particular species for reasons that do not have to do with the individual capacities they have’ (Richard Ryder, 1991), suggesting that it is not morally right or fair for humans to have more rights than animals without justification specific to differences in physical attributes or characteristics. Amy Young Ryder also stated that ‘humans are only animals, just more intelligent’. Assuming cognitive intelligence to be one of the aforementioned differences which provides a suitable justification for the rights of humans above other species, we are able to assess this ability within robotics and draw an appropriate conclusion. The ‘Turing Test1’ (Alan Turing, 1950), is a way of determining a computer’s intelligence, and consists of an interrogator in a separate room from a robot2 and a person (given labels X and Y). The interrogator must determine through questioning alone which the robot is, the aim of the robot being to ensure the interrogator arises at an incorrect judgement. If this occurs, a robot is considered intelligent. This test was passed for the first and only time in 2014 by a robot by Russian developer, Vladimir Veselov, therefore, if we consider intelligence to be the main factor in whether or not a robot should be granted rights, from Turing’s hypothesis it follows that robots should be given rights. However, the ‘Chinese Room Experiment’ (John Searle,1980) argues that the Turing test does not adequately demonstrate the intelligence of a robot. Searle describes a non-Chinese speaker (A) in a room, where notes written in Chinese by a Chinese speaker (B) are slipped under the door. (A) is able to use detailed instructions within the room to reply to these notes, the result being that (B) assumes that they are in a conversation with another Chinese speaker. These instructions act as a metaphor for the coding or information presented to a robot. This experiment demonstrates that intelligence or understanding is not strictly required to appear intelligent, and therefore creates a clear distinction between the two, suggesting that robots may merely appear intelligent, and without the programming and data from humans, they would not be able to perform the same tasks. Drawing from our initial assumption, it is logical to conclude that the greater intelligence of humans can be considered as a justification of the denial of human rights to robots. 1 also known as the Imitation Game 2 the presence of Artificial Intelligence within a robot defines whether a robot obtains the ability to make independent decisions without the aid of a computer, therefore here and henceforth in this essay ‘robot’ shall refer purely to AI robots Amy Young considered equal, consequently following the conclusion from the previous paragraph, robots should not be given rights. In summary, the factors examined; cognitive intelligence; emotional intelligence, or ethics; and life, including the ability to feel pain; can be used to justify the greater rights of humans above other species. However, exploring these factors in relation to robots demonstrated a lack of evidence to lead us to conclude that the rights of robots may be justified in a similar way. Moreover, Singer provides a direct argument against these rights, thus it would be plausible to suggest that robots should not have rights. References Analytics Insight. (2020, November 4). Robots are able to feel pain like humans. Retrieved from Analytics Insight: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/robots-are-able-to-feel-pain-like- humans/ Austin, M. W. (2015, June 8). Whats wrong with Utilitarianism. Retrieved from Psycology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/ethics-everyone/201506/whats-wrong- utilitarianism Chapman, A. (2014, June 9). Deontology: Kantian Ethics. Retrieved from 1000 word philosophy: https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2014/06/09/introduction-to-deontology-kantian-ethics/ Cole, D. (2020, February 20). The Chinese Room Argument. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ Constitutional Rights Foundation. (2001). Natural Rights. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Constitutional Rights Foundation: https://www.crf-usa.org/foundations-of-our- constitution/natural-rights.html Horta, O. (2010, June). What is Speciesism. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225191816_What_Is_Speciesism Amy Young Marvizon, J. C. (2016, December 8). Not just intelligence: why humans deserve to be treated better than animals. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Speaking of Research: https://speakingofresearch.com/2016/12/06/not-just-intelligence-why-humans-deserve-to- be-treated-better-than- animals/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20cornerstone%20ideas,intelligent%20(Ryder%2C%201 991). Max Planck Gesellschaft. (2020, January 22). Sacrifice one person in order to save five? Retrieved from Max Planck Gesellschaft: https://www.mpg.de/14386104/trolley-dilemma-interntional Moravec, H. P. (2020, June 3). Robot. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/technology/robot-technology Oppy, G. a. (2020, August 18). The Turing Test. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/#Tur195ImiGam Reading University. (2014, June 8). Turing Test Success marks milestone in computing history. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from Reading University: http://www.reading.ac.uk/news- archive/press-releases/pr583836.html Self-driving Mercedes will be programmed to save the dir. (2016, October 16). Retrieved from Fast Company. Singer, P. (1978). Equality for animals? Retrieved January 26, 2020, from Utilitarian: https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1979----.htm Singh, A. (2019, August 20). How is AI Improving Predictive Analysis. Retrieved from Martech Vibe: https://martechvibe.com/staff-articles/how-ai-is-improving-predictive-analytics/ Thompson, D. (2018, September 28). Can Artificial Intelligence be smarter than a person. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/can-artificial-intelligence-be-smarter- than-a-human-being/571498/ Amy Young