Robot Rights, A.I. Law, Rebuttal, Philosophy
‘Robots should be slaves’ is the reason this whole blog started. I was trying to find a topic to write some coursework on in college and came across an interesting piece suggesting that robotic enslavement is actually morally justified.
"There is in fact no question about whether we own robots. We design, manufacture, own and operate robots. They are entirely our responsibility. We determine their goals and behaviour, either directly or indirectly through specifying their intelligence, or even more indirectly by specifying how they acquire their own intelligence. But at the end of every indirection lies the fact that there would be no robots on this planet if it weren’t for deliberate human decisions to create them.”
Bryson, Robots Should be Slaves, 2010
At first glance, Bryson's logic appears compelling. She gives several reasons why robots and human beings are different, suggesting that those objective differences are enough to justify treating the two differently. Dissecting the quote I’ve just given allows for 5 separate differences to be identified.
- We own robots.
- We design, manufacture, own and operate robots.
- Robots are entirely our responsibility.
- We determine the goals and behaviours of robots.
- Robots would not exist if humans did not deliberately create them.
Today, I will focus specifically on the first of Bryson’s points.
First, we must ask an important question. Is ownership really relevant in determining whether robots should be slaves? Hume would dismiss Bryson's point from the outset. "There is in fact no question about whether we own robots," is a correct statement. It is a description of the current law. What I mean is that people currently owning machines is undisputable. To read this post, you need an electronic device. Phones, computers and tablets are all owned by someone. Even if you're using a library's desktop, the library owns the equipment. Siri is the property of Apple, Alexa that of Amazon and so forth. Bryon's missed the point though.
Hume's Guillotine is a fundamental of contemporary philosophy. Statements are divided into two types, descriptive claims and normative claims. "There is in fact no question about whether we own robots," makes a descriptive claim. Existing legal mechanisms mean that robots are owned by somebody else. Whether robots should be slaves, however, is a normative claim. Normative claims explain what should happen in the ideal world. Think of normative claims as answering the question, "what would happen if we lived in a perfect world?" One type of claim cannot be used to prove the other. Consider:
P1: Murder exists.
C: Murder should exist.
My argument appears absurd. The fact murderers exist does not mean that in a perfect world, there would be murderers. If I had the power to shape reality, I would not create a planet where everybody went about killing each other—quite the opposite. When people make moral claims, they usually do so to demonstrate what needs to be changed. Protesters say racism is wrong because they want to stop racism. If racism is only wrong when there is no racism, the statement becomes redundant. Racism is obviously wrong, whether or not it actually exists, meaning that the descriptive and normative claims exist independently. To use one to prove the other crosses the is ought-gap, something that is impossible. No amount of one can be used to prove or disprove the other. I've included a useful diagram to help illustrate the concept generally.
Hume's Guillotine
Even without considering whether robots are owned by someone else, Bryson has been disproven.
There is also an alternative method to dispute Bryson's first statement that I would like to challenge. So far, I have accepted Bryson's assertion that there is "no question about whether we own robots." This claim too is contentious. That may appear to be a strange submission. Haven't I already said that Siri is the property of Apple? Yes, yes, I have. I'm not debating that point. Instead, my argument is more nuanced. I disagree with the claim that we own ALL robots.
When you create a new piece of property, the law has to appoint an owner because the property has previously never been owned. Nobody owns this a blog post before it is written because there was no blog post before. Music, patents and livestock all follow a similar rule. To borrow from Roman law, newly created objects are res nullius.
They are things without owners. Civil law systems (so most legal systems on Continental Europe) tend to adopt the Roman method of designating an owner. Even the Common Law has a similar set of rules. For current purposes, we are only concerned with specificatio. Robots are made of metal wires and plastic, all of which had a prior owner, but the resulting machine is a new thing, a nova species. Say I built a computer using my wires, but your silicon. The two merged in such a way that you could not take back the silicon. Who owns the computer? Well, I do. I provided both the labour and at least some of the necessary materials, so I get to keep the whole computer. You can reclaim a reasonable price for the silicon, but there's no way for you to lawfully take the machine from me. It's my computer.
But why does how new property gets acquired matter? So long as manufacturer's own the cars they build, the precise mechanics behind it all doesn't usually matter too much. My answer to that question is children. Secondary school biology has an entire unit on reproduction. GCSE papers tend to ask students to describe how babies are formed. An egg and sperm cell collide in the uterus, with the result then growing into a child. Think about that for a second. Two different materials are being merged to create a new thing. Children are nova species. Logic dictates that the mother then owns the baby. By the time babies are born, Mothers have contributed both parts (the egg and nutrients) and labour (9 months in the womb).
Laws don't work like that. Mothers do not own their children. Mums might have a significant degree of control over their kids, but this isn't ownership for two essential reasons.
- Their control is revokable.
- Their control is temporary.
Mothers have authority over their offspring for only so long as the law allows that authority. Legal mechanisms exist to remove the power parents have over their children. Social Services can remove children in a range of situations, based on the mother's inability to provide the child with an appropriate home. Admittedly, other property can be confiscated. Those with illegal drugs may be ordered to surrender them, while firearms can be removed. The justification for these powers is, however, entirely different. Cannabis is not taken from offenders for fear the drug will come to harm, but because the drug is harmful. Shotguns are dangerous; they are not the thing in danger. Confiscating weapons is not comparable to saving a child from a hazardous environment.
Moreover, during divorce proceedings, the father can be granted total custody. Although orders of the kind are on uncommon, they are not unheard of. Here, the courts are reallocating power over the child. Again, other property can be redistributed by the courts. Bailiffs can enter your home and take your stuff if you fail to pay your credit card bills. However, like with the analogy between children and illegal substances, comparing children with flat-screen t.vs fails. No debt exists between the parties of a divorce. Judges don't treat custody of your daughter as an asset.
One's authority over their children also comes with an expiry date. Once a child has turned eighteen, they are officially their own entity. No other type of property has this same limitation. Patents face yearly renewal and copyrights have end-date—neither of these gains a personality when the time is up. Instead, intellectual property becomes part of the public domain. Anyone can print a copy of Shakespeare free of charge. That doesn't mean Hamlet can go into a bar and order a beer. Meanwhile, the British have a tradition of getting absolutely wasted once you turn eighteen. It's a custom to mark becoming an adult.
All these differences between kids and property mean that children cannot be owned. It makes sense. A sweatshop where the parents use their offspring as cheap labour would get shut down. Why I've mentioned children is that whatever justification prevents children from being owned could equally apply to at least some robots. I will not suggest that refrigerators should be unownable. An intelligent machine with complex emotions is a wholly different matter. What justifies excluding children from the general rules of specificatio is unclear. Unpicking the issue would be an article itself. I won't try to unravel the point now. Children demonstrate that androids could be excluded from the ordinary rules of specificatio. What the example does not prove is that such an exception exists. Proving an exception was not what I set out to prove. The title is 'robots should not be slaves', not robots are not slaves. Bringing the a ground for doubt is enough.
One thing is clear. Robots should not be slaves: ownership is not 9/10 of the law. Sorry, Bryson.