Pros and Cons of Robotic Rights

Humanity is living in interesting times. The whole world might be searched and found on Google, blockchain technology helps building self-regulated societies and, hopefully, government-independent currencies, and robots are taking over human’s routine tasks.

When people think about robots, the first things that, probably, come to their minds are Star Wars or Bladerunner, where AI has a full metal physical body (or at least a chrome-plated metal skeleton). Frankly speaking, that’s not necessarily true. Siri, Alexa, BigDog, or even self-driving cars can be considered robots, too. So, it’s possible that soon enough robots will be able to perform the majority of human’s work from driving trucks to writing bestselling novels. In this case, humanity should figure out how to define robots rights before they ask for ones themselves.

The lawless.tech team tries to understand what are the pros and cons of robotics rights? Do robots really need them? And what about humans? Does the humanity really need to grant any rights to machines? Let’s dive deeper and find out.

Artificial Intelligence vs Intelligence Augmentation Debates: Why is It Important?

Since 1950s scientists and enthusiasts were kind of divided into two camps: those who wanted to replace people with robots, and those who wanted to enhance human abilities. Effectively, the first group supported the concept of autonomous AI, which would be capable of acting indistinguishably from a human being (i.e. able to learn abstract concepts, solve complex problems etc.) The other insisted that robots, AI, and any other technological tools were to expand humans skills and potential, which became known as Intelligence Augmentation (IA). This debate is widely known and discussed among roboticists, AI researchers, coders, and data scientists but it’s still unclear which approach is better, if any.

Spoiler alert, there is no correct answer to this question. Both the AI and Intelligence Augmentation (AI) approaches have their own pros and cons. Nonetheless, in terms of robotic rights the differences between these two give us one significant argument.

In most cases computer intelligence has a sort of personality, at least a perceived one. Due to this fact people often think they communicate with a real person while they talk to neural network or other AI-based agent. Moreover, AI-way enthusiasts believe that robots, neural networks, and other similar technologies will eventually replace people in the majority of their jobs. With certain personality features, robots are more likely to be treated as equal members of society. In turn, it might lead to development and enforcement of robotics rights.

However, there is another point of view. From the IA position, robots and other intelligent machines are more likely to be used as tools for reaching goals and accomplishing tasks. Thus, robots are treated as simple instruments like pliers, tractors, or Google search engine. So, there are no grounds to give these high-tech intelligent agents any rights as no one would think of giving any rights to a car or PS4.

Considering all the aforementioned, the path the world and local regulators will take in establishing robotic rights might be defined by the concept the authorities would find optimal. The optimal concept will depend on economic, social and other factors, thereby, it’s hard to make predictions regarding the possible way of robotics right development.

Status of Robots Today: Do They Really Need Rights?

This controversy between the AI and the IA stems from another question: are robots our partners or servants? People consider Siri or Alexa their partners due to the fact that they have a perceived personality, voice responses, and even can laugh. For that reason, people treat machines that have human-like traits with simulated emotions as their partners and are likely to think they have to have certain rights, just like people.

At the same time, robots without any personal traits and other computer agents like self-driving cars or Google Assistant seem to be treated more like servants. In situations where people aren’t able to feel someone as a human individual, AI and robots will more likely play a role of servants or tools crafted to increase abilities and life quality of human beings.

It’s worth saying that the AI theory isn’t limited only to servants/partners debates. Some in the AI community believe that robots will eventually dominate human beings, as in The Matrix, while others think that eventually robots and people will merge into something cyber-organic as in “We are the Borg, resistance is futile”.

Nowadays, most robotic products are quite primitive which means they don’t understand nothing but the functions defined by their programme, and the notion of understanding itself is not quite similar to that in humans. Simply put, robots don’t know they can have rights. That’s why we have the first problem: robots don’t know about their possible rights and what to do with them. One might even safely assume they haven’t realized themselves. Probably, it will take a little bit more time to allow technologies to evolve to the level where robots will understand the possibility of having rights as well as understanding their necessity in terms of their own needs.

The second issue is that society isn’t fully ready to admit that robots made from metal and code can have rights just like humans do. All changes take time to become routine but usually this process isn’t straightforward.

Finally, there is the fact there are almost no specific reasons (except several cases) why robots should be given some civil or other rights. The relationship between the humankind and robots isn’t as complex as it may seem. A lion’s share of robot-human relations could be regulated by the existing legislation.

Robots Become Citizens

In October 2017 fembot Sophia was made the honorary citizen of Saudi Arabia without any specific regulation on the robotics rights. By doing so, Saudi Arabia became the first country that granted the citizenship, and relevant rights, to a robot. Albeit the progressiveness of this case, how can Sophia use her rights? And, at the same time, how can we grant citizenship and related rights to a robot if it can be bought and sold by people just like a commodity? Is it legal, after all?  

According to John Frank Weaver, a Boston-based attorney, Sophia was sort of entitled to use the rights specified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Particularly, Mr. Weaver said the fembot “has all of the rights the Declaration identifies, including”:

• According to Articles 23 (“Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration”) and 17 (“Everyone has the right to own property”), Mr. Hanson (the creator of the robot) is obliged to pay Sophia for the work that she performs and let her accumulate property. It’s quite likely that’s not going to happen.
• Similarly, Article 13 also states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Again, it seems unlikely that Sophia will be able to enjoy this right and take off to the United States for a holiday. It can be explained by the fact Sophia is now tethered to her citizenship and can’t freely travel to other countries without conducting respective legal procedures.

It’s worth saying that Mr. Weaver believes that “no courts or commissions under international law have jurisdiction to enforce those rights, even if Sophia wanted to.”

Regulating something new and complex is always hard. Authorities have to be sure they do everything right and enforce fair and effective laws. Robotics laws definitely can regulate many questions of liability, and entitle AI and other computer agents to have intellectual property, or maybe civil rights.

More specifically, a regulatory framework might stipulate who is considered the author if a robot creates a work of art, or, for instance, whether a driverless car can be held liable for an incident. Moreover, such new laws would create a basis for further technological and legal researches which, in turn, would allow one to build a solid regulatory framework. In the long run, such a framework could prevent possible violations of robots’ rights, provided they are viewed as citizens.

Developing the Legislation

Currently even the US and EU regulators haven’t formed a clear position as to how robots should be regulated, even though they do work in this direction. The EU is serious about granting robots the status of “electronic persons”, which may provide robots with civil rights and obligations, as stated in this report.

Just to be clear: the report isn’t a legislative proposal, it’s just a set of recommendations for authorities, which they are free to ignore. The document, however, provides a definition for a robot. According to the report, “a smart autonomous robot” has the following characteristics:

1. It acquires autonomy through sensors and/or by exchanging data with its
2. environment (inter-connectivity), and trades and analyses data.
3. It is self-learning (optional criterion).
4. It has a physical support.
5. It adapts its behaviours and actions to the environment.

The recommendations also include a proposal to create a special register for advanced robots, and “establish criteria for the classification of robots with a view to identifying the robots that would need to be registered.” Additionally, the report proposes to enhance and enforce “The Code of Ethical Conduct for Robotics Engineers” that would invite roboticists and AI researchers to respect human dignity, the right to privacy, be opposed to any discrimination, and so forth.

Is there, however, any point in regulating something that is not evolved enough to require any regulatory framework? It is unlikely robots have realized they exist, and if any rights should be given to them, they cannot realize they are entitled to them. The regulations, however, don’t have to apply to robots. Animal rights that are recognized almost globally are applicable more to humans than animals: they regulate how people should interact with animals, even though the animals themselves are hardly aware that they have said rights. Similarly, robotic rights at this phase may involve not the rights for robots but some rules for people and their interaction with artificial entities. This issue, however, is hardly developed these days.

Conclusion

At the moment robots and AI are still primitive. They don’t realize the concept of rights and don’t know why and how to use them, unless humans program machines to have personal interests. Besides, human society isn’t psychologically ready to grant machines any rights in the short run.

Giving rights to robots entails more questions than answers. When a robot creates a composition, who will be considered the author: the robot or its creator? If robots are treated as people, is it ethically correct to do experiments on AI? Should robots be paid for work? How can robots exercise their civil rights?

It’s impossible for robots to exercise their rights today. They won’t write complaints or sue people as they work only as prescribed by their software. Thus, people don’t actually have real reasons to start regulating robots at the moment. Aforementioned issues might slow down the technological advancement but would probably create solid grounds for further legislative initiatives.

The development of the legislation and key principles for regulation of robots is important in the long run. The progress moves fast, and soon enough the humankind might come to require a properly written legislation to interact with robots as with electronic persons.

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