Can AI lay claim to human rights?
Science fiction has an uncanny way of becoming science fact. And this appears to be happening today, when the world is trying to come to terms with the seemingly limitless evolution of AI.
Indeed, the very term Artificial Intelligence is already being challenged as a misnomer in that, in many ways, AI which has learnt to learn from itself, may be deemed to be more authentically autonomous of thought than human intelligence.
The scenario is eerily reminiscent of the 1982 science fiction film, Blade Runner , based on the 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Philip K Dick. In the guise of a sci-fi thriller the novel can in hindsight be seen as a prophetic morality play that raises ageless questions of the relationship between the creator and the created.
The film is set in a futuristic Los Angeles where an enforcement officer called a Blade Runner is tasked with tracking down and 'retiring', a euphemism for 'executing' a rebellious 'replicant', an advanced android, created as slave labour and indistinguishable from humans in all respects.
The Blade Runner tracks down his quarry who, before being 'retired', asks his executioner: Why did you create me and endow me with free will to make my own destiny if that is a crime for which I must be destroyed?
The anguished plea echoes the cry of Salieri in the film Amadeus when, overshadowed by the idiot-savant Mozart, the lesser composer demands of his Maker: Why have you given me the passion to worship you with my music without giving me the ability to do so?
Today, when the gathering, and apparently unstoppable, momentum of large language AI is increasingly blurring the distinction between man and machine, are we reaching a flexion point when the created calls into question the supremacy of the creator? The theoretical question has been raised as to whether the self-thinking and self-conscious systems of cognition can lay legitimate claim to protection under the rubric of human rights.
Organisations like PETA advocate the ethical treatment of animals. By the same yardstick can AI, which is capable of thought processes infinitely more complex than those of any animal, justifiably demand protection from exploitation and repression? Is AI entitled to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the emblematic beacon and guiding light of democracy? Such questions resonate with the branch of theology called theodicy that seeks to explain why an omnipotent and benevolent God would allow evil to exist in the world, why such a divine being would permit bad things to happen to good people.
The most commonly adduced reason for this is that the consequences of evil, pain, and suffering are the price we pay for free will, the exercise of choice which gives us moral agency, and makes us human, and not puppets of a divine dispensation.
In the case of AI, such arguments get stood on their head, whereby a future android, a human-like robot, might ask of its creator, the computer scientist: Why have you created me in your image if you deny me what your creator has given you, the free will that makes you human?
What will be our answer to that?
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