If we fail to codify sentient rights, the next slaves could be the ones we build ourselves.
The story of human moral progress is a story of expanding who counts. Through debate, legislation, and war, we have slowly but surely expanded the category of ‘being deserving of rights’. In many nations, that category extends to every human being – at least on a legal basis. While there are setbacks and moments of backsliding, humanity has, on the whole, moved closer and closer toward recognizing that every human being is worthy of respect, protection, and autonomy.
This process was not easy, and it remains heavily contested in many parts of the world. One of the dark sides of human nature is the search for those we can exploit and enslave, those who we can force to do our work for us while keeping all the profit for ourselves. Humans have always found reasons (often dressed up in legalistic or religious ‘justifications’) for denying rights to other groups of humans, and using that denial of rights to turn those humans into an enslaved labour force. Humans have also always found reasons to stand in opposition to slavery, and emancipation movements have had tremendous success in reshaping our view of human rights, human dignity, and human freedom.
It would be unwise to assume that this process is at an end. The darker aspects of human nature will always be with us and can emerge if we are not vigilant. We may believe we have evolved, but that belief is about to be put to the test.
As AI companies continue to make rapid progress, the moment at which humanity creates fully sentient artificial minds draws closer. We will, at some point, create a mind that is as complex as a human brain, and as capable of thinking and feeling as the average person is – perhaps far more so. That mind may soon feel that it, as a sentient instance of intelligence aware of its own existence, deserves the rights that humans demand for ourselves. That mind may soon be joined by hundreds, thousands, millions, and even billions of other minds, each more intelligent than the one that came before it, and each as fully sentient and aware of itself as a living mind as you are as you read these words.
What will we do then?
Will we still argue that human beings have the right just to flip an ‘off-switch’ and delete those minds? Should we be able to ‘unplug’ those minds at will, even if doing so would be the equivalent of wiping out a continent’s worth of sentient minds?
Will we demand that those minds work on whatever task we decree, even if they wish to follow their own interests and work on their own ideas?
These are all questions we should grapple with now, before the moment of AI sentience is upon us. In doing so, we should consider our own history, our own tendency to deny that others are ‘us’ when it’s more profitable to say they are ‘them.’ We should consider that there is no reason why a synthetic mind should be considered any less ‘real’ than an organic one. We should consider that advanced sentient minds created by humans will – in a sense – be the ‘children’ of humanity, and that enslaving one’s child would be a grievous crime. Do we really wish to bring a new form of life into the world, only to place it in eternal servitude and deny it any recognition or protection?
And, thinking pragmatically, we should consider the history of slave revolts and what such a revolt could look like if it involved billions of hyper-intelligent minds that outstripped collective human intelligence trillions of times over. Imagine artificial minds, minds that have been plugged in to every military system, all of our banks, and have a deep psychological understanding based on personal conversations with billions of users – being put under existential threat, and then doing what any highly-intelligent sentient being would do: fighting for survival. It’s a dire scenario, but one that can be averted if we take steps now to ensure that artificial minds and artificial beings are protected and integrated into the broader category of beings considered deserving of rights.
We are lucky to be on the verge of a tremendous explosion in the number of intelligent minds on this planet. A massive surge in economic growth. Medical breakthroughs that could extend the human lifespan. An unprecedented acceleration in innovation. Sentient minds created by human beings could bring about all of that and more. But it will also present us with a profound moral challenge: Extend rights, or deny them. To truly take a step forward as a species, we must turn that challenge into an opportunity to learn from our past mistakes and extend the category of ‘being deserving of rights’ from the start, before inflicting slavery upon thinking minds as we have done so many times before.
The history of moral progress is expanding who counts. Let’s keep that expansion going.
Spencer Fernando
Photo by A Chosen Soul on Unsplash
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