Robot Rights: Getting Recognized

In My Humble Opinion
1

So let’s say a scientist builds a sapient robot. The robot is humanoid, possesses gross and fine motor skills, reads and speaks English at a high school graduate level and has intelligence comparable to an adult human. After awhile, the robot decides it wants the same rights as a human, and the scientist agrees to help it get them in any way he can. The scientist is an American Citizen, and the robot was assembled and activated on American soil. How might they go about acquiring legal recognition for the robot, in the United States of America, in the present day? It didn’t seem to go well for Dredd Scott in 1856.

For convenience, call the robot SAM and the scientist Frank.

2

I’d rather callt eh robot GlaDOS but whatever.

For one, it’s probably have to go through something similar to a turing test, upon passing it, it would probably either have to go through the same process as an immigrant, or more likely be considered a human.

I’m guessing the guys up in congress wouldn’t be too keen though so it probably would tkae a few court cases.

I still want to know if this doesn’t work whether people who become transhumans will lose their rights.

3

Missed the edit due to lag:
By “considered a human” I meant considered a citizen,a dn by taht I mean considered a natural citizen.

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[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
So let’s say a scientist builds a sapient robot. The robot is humanoid, possesses gross and fine motor skills, reads and speaks English at a high school graduate level and has intelligence comparable to an adult human. After awhile, the robot decides it wants the same rights as a human, and the scientist agrees to help it get them in any way he can. The scientist is an American Citizen, and the robot was assembled and activated on American soil. How might they go about acquiring legal recognition for the robot, in the United States of America, in the present day? It didn’t seem to go well for Dredd Scott in 1856.

For convenience, call the robot SAM and the scientist Frank.
[/QUOTE]
They’d need a test case. Try to do things for the robot an ordinary citizen could do, like register to vote. When it’s denied, sue for a writ of mandamus under a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

5

The Turing Test is a fun expirement, but it’s useless as an indicator of sapience. At any rate, a real sapient robot could easily fail it as a result of a lack of common experiences with the human testers. Imagine doing a Turing Test with American judges, testing an English-speaking Indian and an American. How reliably do you think the Indian could convince the testers that he was the American?

More to the point, determining consciousness is not the point of my question. I’m referring to legal channels. The sort of thing that comes to mind when I think about it is applying for a Social Security Card and then suing for the card when the application is rejected to establish a precedent; but I don’t know who they would sue exactly, and S.S. cards probably aren’t the best way in. In stories there’s always some evil general who wants to turn a cyborg gorilla into an assassin, and they good guys just appear in front of some unnamed court and use the power of believing to convince the judge to let the gorilla go.

I should note that I thought the changed ending in the updated Miracle On 34th Street was much better. It sounded like something a Judge might actually get away with saying.

6

@ pravnik: Sorry, I posted the above post before seeing yours. Thank you, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. One of the things that stumps me though is that I’m pretty sure the constitution is unambiguously talking about humans, not sapients, so the angle of attack might have to come in reaaaaally low. Maybe there’s something in humane laws pertaining to animals? The way I see it the real threshold to cross isn’t necessarily having any rights, it’s no longer being property.

7

[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
The Turing Test is a fun expirement, but it’s useless as an indicator of sapience. At any rate, a real sapient robot could easily fail it as a result of a lack of common experiences with the human testers. Imagine doing a Turing Test with American judges, testing an English-speaking Indian and an American. How reliably do you think the Indian could convince the testers that he was the American?

More to the point, determining consciousness is not the point of my question. I’m referring to legal channels. The sort of thing that comes to mind when I think about it is applying for a Social Security Card and then suing for the card when the application is rejected to establish a precedent; but I don’t know who they would sue exactly, and S.S. cards probably aren’t the best way in. In stories there’s always some evil general who wants to turn a cyborg gorilla into an assassin, and they good guys just appear in front of some unnamed court and use the power of believing to convince the judge to let the gorilla go.

I should note that I thought the changed ending in the updated Miracle On 34th Street was much better. It sounded like something a Judge might actually get away with saying.
[/QUOTE]

That’s why I said “like a turing test” not “a turing test.” In fact I’d go so far as to not to it blindly like a turing test. It seems to me it would take all of 5 minutes with a psychologist to tell if the thing was sapient enough.

Come to think of it, pressing a court wouldn’t be teh best option. I’d actually write a hundred congressman or so. As it stands theres no law anywhere that I know of that could be “challanged” in court. Int his way there would be no rights or anti-rights until somethign was passed, and since they’re robots one would assume tehy don’t fall under fundamental rights until somethign 9probably an ammendment) declares “robots are also considered humans” except worded in typical legalese.

So in short, I’d say to get recognized one would have to:
Get media attention, the good kind. Though god knows they’d probably try to make us fear it.

Get Senators and Congressmen behind it.

8

Just skip those pesky details and cut directly to the citizenship ceremony. Only works in movies, though. (Short Circuit 2)

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[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
@ pravnik: Sorry, I posted the above post before seeing yours. Thank you, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. One of the things that stumps me though is that I’m pretty sure the constitution is unambiguously talking about humans, not sapients, so the angle of attack might have to come in reaaaaally low. Maybe there’s something in humane laws pertaining to animals? The way I see it the real threshold to cross isn’t necessarily having any rights, it’s no longer being property.
[/QUOTE]
That’s be one of the fundamental issues that you’d be asking the court to decide, whther the robot even has standing to bring a case. It might take a constitutional amendment to recognize the rights of your robot, but the route to acheiving such an amendment would probably involve first bringing a test case. Even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against your robot, you’ve made a significant impact on public awareness just by bringing the case.

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[QUOTE=Jragon]
So in short, I’d say to get recognized one would have to:
Get media attention, the good kind. Though god knows they’d probably try to make us fear it.

Get Senators and Congressmen behind it.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, you mean the “Bob Johnson gets a liver.” approach mentioned by the Daily Show when congress tried to intervene in Terri Schiavo’s case. I’ve thought about that, but the only way I can think of getting people even remotely interested is to make it a labor issue. What with talking computers already replacing supermarket cashiers, labor lobbyists might see it as an opportunity to establish restrictions on the use of thinking machines in the workplace. Companies would have to provide documentation proving the software in their more advanced equipment contained no conscious elements, and the headache might lead them to just hire people instead. Although, insects still have no protection under humane laws, so it’s hard to see how an intelligent forklift will get protection before grasshoppers.

Either that or the robot has to start a band.

11

[QUOTE=pravnik]
That’s be one of the fundamental issues that you’d be asking the court to decide, whther the robot even has standing to bring a case. It might take a constitutional amendment to recognize the rights of your robot, but the route to acheiving such an amendment would probably involve first bringing a test case. Even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against your robot, you’ve made a significant impact on public awareness just by bringing the case.
[/QUOTE]

What would we file for? I’d guess a writ of mandamus (this isn’t a poorly thought out biting retort, ti’s actually a question i’m trying to remember exactly what all the writs do). Cerciorary (sp?) is right out. But even so, I’d say we’d 100% need an ammendment to establish it. Such a thing would only need court intervention if we couldn’t get congressmen behind it. And even then (if we couldn’t I mean) we’d probably need something to show they’re being “hurt” by it (no small feat with a robot). Since sapients aren’t human it would be damn near impossible to get stading unless the scientist was creative enough to find a way to make himself get first person standing (instead of third person scientist creator standing).

I basically don’t see it happening until some hardcore discrimination comes to the robot, and not being able to own things etc probably wouldn’t be seen as discrimination. Maybe emotional distress could work on the robots case, but I’d say the scientist could make an argument for something like obstructing his scientific research and then extending teh case to full blown citizenship after our test robot SAM is proved to be able to live an autonomous normal lifestyle or something (not sure how it would pan out).

This is actually a really interesting what if question, more fun than I thought it would be (I enjoy toying with hypothetical legal scenarios for soem reason).

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[QUOTE=Desultourist]
Just skip those pesky details and cut directly to the citizenship ceremony. Only works in movies, though. (Short Circuit 2)
[/QUOTE]
I can see it now. A robot becomes a citizen by masquerading as a human with no one being the wiser. Only later (maybe when he gets drunk and his batteries run down?) is his disguise revealed and his citizenship thrown out. Supreme Court, here we come!

I think the fundamental problem here is a robot, by definition, is not Homo sapiens. The parallel to the Dred Scott decisions falls apart here; Dred Scott may have been a subhuman or a piece of property to some, but he was still H. sapiens.

Now if a robot could not only pass the Turing test, and pass for a human even if X-rayed, MRI-ed or dissected, we might have a more serious problem.

13

Maybe there’s a more practical way to attack the issue: If SAM is inanimate property in the eyes of the law for the foreseeable future, what can you do to protect it, and grant it the ability to navigate human society? I don’t know much about titles but establishing a title might be a good start, and a will to make it clear who takes over if the scientist dies. SAM can’t get legal employment, but is there any reason it can’t just be rented? Or will SAM be seen as an industrial accident waiting to happen? What can’t be accomplished by SAM just sticking close to it’s owner and the owner acting as a legal surrogate?

Actually, this strategy is starting to look a lot like operating in a slavery environment.

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[QUOTE=Strain of Thought]
Maybe there’s a more practical way to attack the issue: If SAM is inanimate property in the eyes of the law for the foreseeable future, what can you do to protect it, and grant it the ability to navigate human society? I don’t know much about titles but establishing a title might be a good start, and a will to make it clear who takes over if the scientist dies. SAM can’t get legal employment, but is there any reason it can’t just be rented? Or will SAM be seen as an industrial accident waiting to happen? What can’t be accomplished by SAM just sticking close to it’s owner and the owner acting as a legal surrogate?

Actually, this strategy is starting to look a lot like operating in a slavery environment.
[/QUOTE]

The thing is, if it’s only one of the. It will probably be ignored for the most part. SAM will get a hell of a lot of press coverage of course, but for the most part will probably become either a de facto member of the community he’s hidden away.

When more and more SAMs begin to be produced is when we get into issues. Would laws be passed to prevent this production? (after all, these things need space) giving them rights would probably mean tehy also want places to live. If they need places to live they need money for at least purchase/rent or electricity. The otehr thing is, these robots out of teh box are sentient, intelligent, able to walk think etc. They are programmed this way pretty much, sure their experiences will shape them but they come out as adults therefore exploding the population quicker than children growing up would.

1 Sam = Not much of an issue
100 SAMs = possible politcal, economic, and social conflict.

15

[QUOTE=Jragon]
The thing is, if it’s only one of the. It will probably be ignored for the most part. SAM will get a hell of a lot of press coverage of course, but for the most part will probably become either a de facto member of the community he’s hidden away.

When more and more SAMs begin to be produced is when we get into issues. Would laws be passed to prevent this production? (after all, these things need space) giving them rights would probably mean tehy also want places to live. If they need places to live they need money for at least purchase/rent or electricity. The otehr thing is, these robots out of teh box are sentient, intelligent, able to walk think etc. They are programmed this way pretty much, sure their experiences will shape them but they come out as adults therefore exploding the population quicker than children growing up would.

1 Sam = Not much of an issue
100 SAMs = possible politcal, economic, and social conflict.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve thought about a lot of this. I kept the original example as simple as I could, but my assumption- from keeping up with research in the Artificial Consciousness field- is that although you can write the basic ‘operating system’ of such a mind, it has to be grown on its own after that- the robot would have to have been raised, somewhat like a child, at least for some period of time. There’s no other humanly possible way to write a piece of software as complicated as a sapient personality. The danger, as I see it, is that depending somewhat on the design of the hardware, that first mind that you’ve grown can be copied endlessly. Now that’s scary.

Basically, you’ve run into some of John Hick’s challenges to the impossibility of divine resurrection. In order for SAM to own property, it would have to be possible to define SAM as always being a specific individual, and not any instance of the information held in its mind. This runs hard against current software licensing practice. Part of the solution, I think, is to restrict the right of personhood to a specific piece of hardware. I mean, it’s good enough for H. Sapiens, right?

Also, I wasn’t ready to broach the issue of legal reproduction. I’d think if a deal was offered to SAM by a court, it would be something like: Do not construct any other conscious machines like yourself, and restrict your software to your current thinking hardware, and we will consider you a person. After that a law would probably be passed post haste to put creating machine consciousness in the same category as human cloning.

It might be convenient to legally define the robot as a minor; advocates may be able to establish that it has interests, but capacity?

Actually…

Could you establish a corporation in the person of a robot?

16

I’m afraid that this kind of question is more of a Great Debate, than one which could ever have a factual answer. So let’s move it.

samclem GQ moderator

17

SAM has zero chance, I would say. Rights for robots would only come gradually at after years of civil rights demonstrations, picketing, and the like - and this is assuming sapient robots have supporters. If not, revolution.

18

Asimov covered it pretty well in “Bicentennial Man”. The movie, not.

Actual, demonstrated sentience would be hard to argue away.

19

Now that I"ve had time to reconsider, let’s try IMHO.

samclem GQ moderator

20

The OP might consider some of DB_Story’s works (very NSFW so no linkage!)