Court Grants Chimps Human Rights. Will AI Receive Them Next?

Court Grants Chimps Human Rights. Will AI Get Them Next?

by Monica Joshi

A New York State court is seeking to protect two research chimps — Hercules and Leo — from unlawful imprisonment following arguments made by The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), a group whose goal is to extend human rights into new, non-human areas.

Citing habeas corpus, a common law statute that has traditionally protected only humans, the court moved to liberate the two chimps from the Stony Brook University Labs in Stony Brook, NY. For the NhRP, this is simply the beginning in the struggle for animal welfare rights.

As chimps share 98.6% of our DNA, they have a close connection with humans and even closer ties to our ancestors.This ought not to be a surprise ruling as chimps are incredibly autonomous complex creatures, with the ability to reason, identify and use symbols for communication and have other cognitive functions significantly similar to humans. However, it is due to the fact that this is the first time that human rights have been granted to nonhuman creature.

Not only does this come as a major victory for animal rights it sets a precedence for cases of nonhuman creatures in captivity.

We have to ask ourselves, "Will anything that displays human-like qualities be treated like a human with human rights under the court of law?"

There is a strong movement pro the notion that AI can be both self-aware and autonomous. It is possible that if all that is needed to writ the habeas corpus is to display a significant amount of human-like qualities including autonomy, rational cognitive function and self-awareness, AI could be next.

Engineers at MIT released a statement today claiming that they have now successfully created autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that will save engineers a whole lot of time writing scripts or menial commands that are required to help the robot carry out its mission under water. In addition, developers at Universitaet Bielfeld have developed a robot, Hector, who will be able to produce some sort of a higher-order reflection, which up until now was considered a human-only ability. With robotic autonomy so close to the finish line and Hector's self-awareness being observed, it seems very likely that AI could be next to attaining human rights.

One of the objections to granting human rights to AI could be that AI such as ConceptNet score the same as a four year old on the IQ test. Regardless, there is definitive progress being made to improve AI to a fully-developed human level as is seen in the cases of Hector and AUVs. It still seems plausible that we could grant AI four year old status just as we would a four year old human who is quite clearly autonomous and self-aware. Simply because the AI is not as smart as a fully developed human being, that doesn't mean that it couldn't have the same rights as a human insofar as it is autonomous, self-aware and has a potential for change.

If we were to think of the programmer as a parent-like figure and the program as a child, we could simply say that AI is in its developing stages right now and has the complete potential to become a being with human-like qualities. Hence, AI should be given, in the future, human rights just as chimpanzees were granted human rights by the state of New York.  

In fact it might be essential to imbue AI with human values, says Michael Vassar, an American futurist, activist, and entrepreneur. Without a strong moral framework around the creation of AI that will eventually outpace human intelligence, we might easily engineer our own destruction.