Ryan Calo (@rcalo) writes an interesting piece in Forbes (see link below) about conferring human rights on Artificial Intelligences, a theme Alex Garland has been discussing during the promotion of his new film Ex Machina.
He rightly points out that we can’t do this without radical changes to our laws and institutions. He mentions the right to reproduce as something that, should the AI choose to exercise this right, we could be overwhelmed by.
He also states:
There is reason to believe we will never be able to recreate so-called strong artificial intelligence.
This is something that is still under debate, so it’s not at all decided that we cannot create Strong AI. However, we are a long way from even generating a rudimentary Artificial General Intelligence.
Nevertheless, it is worth considering the hypothetical rights that could be granted to an AI. Clearly, an AI is not a human in the strict biological sense. But should this distinction mean an AI should be treated as a lesser entity, even if it demonstrates all the sentience of a human? This is uncomfortably close to the way slaves were treated in our past and is sure to be a hot topic of debate.
In any event, history has shown that politics and laws always trail behind technologies. Should this continue to be the case, we will attain Strong AI long before the case AI vs. State reaches the inside of a courtroom.
via What Ex Machina’s Alex Garland Gets Wrong About Artificial Intelligence.
On Machine Intelligence 