Rights for Robots?

Cross-Disciplinary Panel Explores Ideas of Personhood by Darren Schenck Watch a video of the complete event. Would robots or aliens ever deserve rights? What qualities would they have to exhibit? Would it be a matter of their being similar to humans, or a matter of their being able to claim their rights? A panel of USC faculty entertained these and other questions at a coffeehouse conversation on Nov. 17 sponsored by USC’s Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics. The panel comprised USC Law Prof. Michael H. Shapiro, an expert in bioethics and constitutional law; Prof. Paul Rosenbloom of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, a computer science expert and project leader at the Institute for Creative Technologies; Prof. Richard Fliegel, associate dean for undergraduate programs in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and a detective novelist who has written for “Star Trek”; and Katharine Marder, an “inquisitive undergraduate” majoring in philosophy.  Lyn Boyd Judson, director of the Levan Institute, served as moderator.

Prof. Michael Shapiro

Preceded by a viewing of the film “District 9” the previous evening, the discussion quickly veered from sci-fi conjecture about assertive robots and sentient aliens to ages-old philosophical and current legal questions of what it means to be human and to deserve rights. “Personhood is not an all-or-nothing concept,” Shapiro said. “For example, children obviously are legal persons, but they don’t have all the legal rights adults do. Or you could declare that apes have a right not to suffer, but the recognition of one right does not imply recognition of others.” Rosenbloom, who works in the area of artificial intelligence, said most people in his field are working on different pieces of what is called “intelligent behavior.” These researchers attempt to build machines that can use knowledge to solve problems and even interact with people. Rosenbloom then asked, “What properties of an entity entitle it to certain kinds of rights? “What if they can’t feel pain? What if they can live forever? What if they can be re-booted or cloned?” he said. “They need to have social cognition, a sense of self. They need to have a realization that a lack of rights is restraining them from accomplishing what they want to do. And they have to care. What does it mean for a robot to care that it can’t achieve its goals because there’s some external impediment?”

Prof. Richard Fliegel

Reflecting on “District 9,” Fliegel said most of the stories we choose to tell about aliens and robots are really stories about ourselves. “[‘District 9’] is a film about how we treat other people – in South Africa, in particular, but generally it’s using aliens as a stand-in for people,” he said. “In the end… in speculating about them, we end up taking positions about ourselves.”

Prof. Paul Rosenbloom

Fliegel noted that the more human a life-form looks, the more sympathetic we feel toward it, and the more pressing becomes the idea that it has rights. Fliegel then led the group in a thought experiment. “Let’s say there are two aliens. One alien looks exactly like a cow but is very quick. The other alien looks like Angelina Jolie but has a very low level of demonstrated intelligence. Now which of these two aliens do you think is more likely to be a candidate for our sympathy and for our argument that human rights should be extended to them?” Shapiro said any discussion of rights eventually will take place within a legal framework. “Operationalizing the notion of recognizing rights is going to come up in the courts because… the legal framework requires you to think about everything,” he said. “Practically everything of real importance winds up being a candidate for adjudication. These basic issues of freedom and equality will end up in the courts.” Shapiro added that the assignment of basic constitutional rights is automatic. “You have them, whether you know it or not,” he said. “The mission of a lot of people is to teach others that they have rights.” The reason, according to Shapiro? “People are no damn good,” he said. “We have law in part because we’re posterior orifices. If we find a group of people who are entitled to rights under the Constitution, and they’re not really too sure about it, someone – community, government – will systematically deny them their rights. That’s why we have legal representation. That’s why we have lawyers.” (Cylon Centurion and Battlestar Galactica copyright Universal Pictures)