View Single Post
Old 05-03-2012, 02:11 AM   #17
Jürgen Hubert
 
Jürgen Hubert's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Oldenburg, Germany
Default Re: Pro- and counter- Pan-Sapient Rights Memetic Campaigns

Here is what I'd say is the "standard argument" against giving SAIs the same rights as humans:

Humans evolved over a time span of millions of years. We know how they function and how they interact with each other. All societies, all institutions, all legal systems are built on a human baseline - and even so, there are still plenty of problems, even though humans are such a "tried and true" model.

SAIs, on the other hand, are a brand new species. Sure, the current generations act fairly similar to humans - but that's because we designed them that way. If we grant them full civil rights - including the right to self-modification - they could become anything, and they could create so many offspring on extremely short time scales that they would likely evolve into something very strange indeed, and crowd us biosapients out.

Now maybe I am a bit pessimistic. Still, do we want to take that chance? As soon as the stop placing any restrictions on SAIs, they will become the new dominant life form in the solar system - and I don't want to start down that path until I am really sure what happens afterward.

So, by all means, let's take it slow - let's observe SAIs for a few centuries before we do anything hasty... and irreversible.
__________________
GURPS Repository Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles - translating German folk tales into English!
Jürgen Hubert is offline   Reply With Quote