Sociology, Social Commentary, Robot Rights, Rebuttal
Another academic year has begun. In unusual circumstances, universities have cast out another bunch of graduates, still wet behind their ears, into the workplace. Many of us spent the last term learning online. Tablets have replaced tablets. Across the country, living rooms were transformed into lecture halls, bedrooms into libraries. Rather than traipsing halfway across the globe to spend months enjoying the company of those their own age, young people everywhere have been using the internet to stay in touch. Lockdown has made lots of people question how they used to live. If we can work from home during a pandemic, why can't we work from home all the time?
What's more, people have dedicated their free time to self-improvement, watching Youtube to learn magic tricks and listening to podcasts to finally understand foreign affairs. Indeed, but for Covid, this blog probably wouldn't exist. News channels have never been so busy. Every day, millions tuned in to find out the latest changes to lockdown at home and abroad. Lots of educators reduced their prices for online courses, many even temporarily giving free access. Given the economic shift to a culture of sub-contracting, self-employment and zero-hour contracts, it is safe to say the value of formal education is on the decline. Automation is replacing jobs at an alarming rate. Algorithms have made entire rooms full of statisticians redundant. Ebooks have ended the need for publishers, agents and copywriters. Anybody can put whatever they want on the internet, something I can attest to. Meanwhile, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have overtaken newspapers, radios and television sets as the prime source of entertainment.
Degrees aren't worth what they once were. When watching the latest TicTock sensation, the audience doesn't care if the 'director' has a degree from Stanford or never finished high school. With enough moxie and hard work, anyone can make it. Affiliate advertising, sponsorship deals and subscription charges all offer ample opportunity to make money. The dot-com boom is over, but there is still plenty of room for individuals to innovate. Even offline, the world is changing. Apprenticeships and vocational courses are becoming the new norm. By brainwashing a generation into believing university is the only option, society has deprived itself of valuable skills. Machines are becoming an integral part of everyday life. Power lines need installing, roads paving. Repairing a 3D printer does not require a college degree. My observations are not meant as a criticism. There are plenty of skills that cannot be taught in a classroom. Reading every marketing book in the world does not make a salesman. Convincing someone to buy a car takes empathy, not a piece of paper. Nobody wants to hire a plumber whose only every seen pipes in a book.
The robot student test is a method programmers have developed to assess the effectiveness of an Artificial General Intelligence. Any robot that can complete a random degree has sufficient capacity to be a person. Finishing a philosophy or sociology paper requires the participant to have a sound grasp of linguistics and logic. Humanities and STEM subjects have different focuses. To complete an engineering degree, one has to have a comprehensive understanding of practical physics and mathematics. Complex concepts have to are applied to a range of scenarios to produce a particular outcome— there is only one right answer. History degrees require candidates to think in abstracts. Explaining what factors contributed to the Great Depression requires facts to be manipulated in new and exciting ways. Inflation + social instability does not equal economic collapse in the same way that 2 + 2 equals 4. Historical events have indeterminate causes. Simulating the same situation a thousand times will result in a thousand different outcome every time as free will is unpredictable. In one world, Rosa Parke would get off the bus; in another, the Ming empire would have kept their navy well funded and found California. Yet, in all those worlds, gravity would operate in the same way. What is so exciting is that the robot student test attempts to account for this variation in skills.
Judging robots by more than just their ability to do complicated maths is a good thing. Automation has broader application than replacing teamsters, manufacturers and pilots. Banks are already testing AIs to answer customer enquiries. Law firms are integrating AIs with legal databases to make preparing cases that much easier. Most large companies have already automated their telephone services. How long before Siri can order pizza without me telling her the where and when? Using robots to replace paralegals, customer service representatives and call centres means machines someone will need to give machines soft skills. An empathetic android makes a better councillor. Robots able to comprehend new languages will make better translators. Being able to process equations is of little use when the robot's purpose is to create new marketing campaigns. People have many of these same skills. To varying degrees, we can tell if someone is feeling down and learn words, the rules on how to use them. I don't challenge the fact that how effective a robot is will need assessing in some way. What I disagree with is the need to assess those abilities with a degree.
Richard Branson never went to university. A country which tested personhood based on one's level of formal education would revoke the rights of a billionaire. Electricians, technicians and plumbers would all be disenfranchised. In Britain, you can become a solicitor without a degree. Those who spend years as a legal executive can work their way up the corporate ladder. My dad never went into higher education. After completing his GCSE's, he went straight into a sales apprenticeship. At one point, he was making millions in Central London. The fallacy that those without a degree are incapable of getting one if they want to is idiotic. Spending three to five years getting into horrendous debt is a life choice. People with degrees don't inherently make more. A large portion of every paycheck goes to paying back the money spent whilst partying in one's youth. Those working as an apprentice get paid to learn. Once someone finishes their apprenticeship, they gain a valuable qualification, almost guaranteed employment and don't have debt weighing them down for the rest of their lives. The points systems of Australia and New Zealand place value on being a qualified contractor. Being a carpenter doesn't seem so stupid now, does it?
Accepting human beings have value beyond their formal education does not mean requiring robots to have a degree to confirm their personhood is illogical. Nothing stops us exercising double standards. Our past tells us nothing if it does not demonstrate humanity is fantastic at drawing arbitrary distinctions. At one time, heterosexuals could have sex at 18, whilst homosexuals had to wait till 21. Before that, gay men could not lawfully consent at all. Women could only vote at 30, while men possessed the same right from 21. Racism, ableism, homophobia and sexism all illustrate society's failure to embrace true equality. If two species of being are both to be awarded personhood, the limitations imposed should be identical for both. Homo sapiens do not need a degree to vote, sit on juries or make a contract, so neither should robots. I'm all for relevant factors preventing robots from having rights. Arguing toasters deserve legal emancipation would be extreme— electronic tin openers do not need a wage. My issue is with inconsistencies. Cortana shouldn't have to do anything you or I don't have to do to prove we're people. Being born is sufficient to be a person. Obviously, manufacturing robots is not enough to grant them rights. Computers don't get National Insurance numbers as soon as they're off the production line.
The robot student test demonstrates personhood shouldn't be granted willy-nilly. There are certain qualities all people must possess. What those qualities are is still unclear. Intelligence, emotions, compassion are all likely to be relevant. Disagreeing with one test does not prove another must be correct. Thousands of characteristics could be combined in millions of ways to formulate an almost infinite number of criteria. Trying to make a workable universal standard is a near-impossible task. Years of research will be needed to find a way to judge people fairly. Condensing the problem into a single blog post would be ambitious, even for me. The best anyone can do is keep trying methods until something sticks. One day, students will fill classrooms to learn about the many ways our legal systems trued to assess personhood. A few of those students might even be robots. In their academic careers, intelligent machines may well be forced to sit many exams— a mandatory degree will not be one of them.