Los Angeles Times Columnist: AI Deserves Human Rights

Via LA Times:

It will become increasingly plausible that AI systems could exhibit something like consciousness. But if we find ourselves seriously questioning whether they are capable of real emotions and suffering, we face a potentially catastrophic moral dilemma: either give those systems rights, or don’t…
Eventually, with the right combination of scientific and engineering expertise, we might be able to go all the way to creating AI systems that are indisputably conscious. But then we should be prepared to pay the cost: giving them the rights they deserve.

This guy, Eric Schwitzgebel, is a professor of philosophy. He approaches the dilemma, obviously, as an academic. The issue is presented as a theoretical, abstract debate over what rights are and to whom they apply — a thought exercise that is a fine and actually necessary function in a healthy society.

And, to be fair, he briefly presents one argument against conferring rights normally reserved for humans to AI:

Some will object: It would hamper research to block the creation of AI systems in which sentience, and thus moral standing, is unclear — systems more advanced than ChatGPT, with highly sophisticated but not human-like cognitive structures beneath their apparent feelings. Engineering progress would slow down while we wait for ethics and consciousness science to catch up.

That’s just one potential problem. Another — arguably the most important reason to not legally protect AI — could be that any rights granted to AI could be weaponized against humans at some future point if the AI truly generates what could be called its own consciousness or will. Or human engineers of AI could weaponize such rights in the same way.

But he is flirting with a liberal readership at the Los Angeles Times that will take his philosophical thought exercise as an invitation to add a new protected category to the Social Justice™ umbrealla. There isn’t an identity they won’t weaponize for the sake of Tolerance™ and Diversity™ and Equity™ and whatever else.

Related: Trust the Artificial Intelligence, Part One

This is because they see the world through a very specific lens, tinted by Marxism. Everyone and everything is either an oppressor or a victim in a strict duality. Some victims are more victimized than others, and some oppressive identity classes are more oppressive than others (“cisgender” Christian white men being the ultimate demon), but everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum based on immutable characteristics.

If you close your eyes and put on your imagination hat, it’s not difficult to envision a mob or progressive banshees with blood-shot eyes and purple hair, powered by Adderall, screaming obscenities at the Patriarchy™ with hand-painted “liberate AI” signs.