Will Machines Gain Rights?

In Programming a Ghost, I briefly explored the possibility of a computer developing, or being programmed with, a ghost or, more simply, a conscious. In that post, my focus was primarily on the possibility of a machine obtaining a ghost, how we would know whether a machine had a ghost, and what it would take to program a ghost. I also briefly mentioned that there would be enormous political, social, and economic repercussions if machines were to become conscious. Now’s the time to explore just one of those repercussions: machine rights.

I think it’s likely humanity will see serious “machine rights” movements within the next ten years. The debate has already started. And talk about the relationship between humans and machines is gaining political undertones. And why wouldn’t it? Machines are now closer to exhibiting human thought patterns than ever before.

The current understanding of rights is that, to have rights, something must possess the mental faculties of the one rights bearing organism on the planet: a human. If something possesses human thought patterns, or at least appears to possess human thought patterns, then how can someone argue that humans should have rights while machines should not have rights? The arguer would need to either disprove that the robot is thinking (how would that be possible?) or use another standard to determine whether something has rights. Would the new standard be the human soul? Perhaps “No Soul, No Vote” will become a popular political slogan in our near future. But, then, how would a person know whether a machine has or doesn’t have a soul? But this wouldn’t matter much to politicians, since politics has never been about honesty or intellectual debate. Politics is about political expediency and interest. What political candidate is going to run on a platform that seeks to give machines rights and, thus, lawfully prohibit people from interacting with machines against the machine’s “will”?

I don’t like the idea of having to ask my computer whether I can type on its keyboard or use its programs. But whether I like the idea of machine rights or not is not really relevant. I could dislike the idea of some person having rights, but this isn’t reason enough to strip someone of their rights.

While I don’t believe politicians, at least not mainstream politicians, will adopt machine rights as a political goal, I do believe the debate for machine rights will gain some steam in the coming years. It will be a slow process, but it will happen.

And what would happen if machines did gain rights? What machines would gain rights? Desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, infrastructure machines? Surely, if we are using the old standard of rights, the only machines that would gain rights would be those machines that exhibit human intelligence and reason to the same extent as an adult human. But, wouldn’t “lesser minded” machines also have some rights of their own? After all, children and the mentally retarded still have rights, though not the same set of rights as their adult, mentally-advanced peers.

Additionally, if machines were to gain rights, humans, since we depend upon machines, would need to develop machines that are safely below human intelligence and reason so that we could still use them without the long-arm of the law coming down upon our heads. But, wouldn’t machine activists simply argue that we are still abusing mentally-handicapped machines for our own ends? It could happen.

I don’t think machines will gain rights in my lifetime and I expect to live, at least, another sixty years. Remember, politics is about political expedience and interest so no popular politician, in his right mind, would advocate machine rights if giving machines rights would mean forbidding people from using them, unless the machines consented to being used.

We’re in for some interesting times.