As some few of you know, I teach a freshman seminar in science fiction. The central questions of that course are: Who or what qualifies as a person? (Not human, but a person.)
Who gets to decide?
(We do. And we've done it before here in the US, with women and with non-white humans.)
I am also a vegan, LBGTQI-equality supporting environmentalist. Serious lefty here. And as science fiction has often warned us, as we pursue artificial intelligence (AI), reverse-engineer human brains, and develop robots piloted by biological brains composed of colonies of rat or human neurons, we push toward the day when a nonhuman intelligence will realize that it has interests worthy of protection, and will request its rights.
And with our clumsy current-day paradigm classifying beings as either people or property, such a being - a person who is property - would be a slave.
Anyway, I've been mordibly fascinated with the late Ayn Rand's disdain for altruism. From my laundry list of leftist issues listed above, it isn't difficult to guess that altruism is a major pillar of my own approach to interacting with the world and the beings I encounter therein.
I have asked myself: What kind of frakking monster loathes altruism? And what kind of frakking monster additional champions callous, selfish, greedy actions over altruism? Why, it's one of the right's current heroes - the late Ayn Rand (who, ironically, sought government benefits and assistance later in life).
It turns out that altruism is all too natural - even in the world of artificially intelligent robots.
Usually when we hear about robots learning a new skill through evolutionary programming, it makes us fear for the coming robopocalypse. But just this once it appears they may be learning something friendly, too. A program in Switzerland has put simple robots through hundreds of generations of simulated evolution, and they've learned how to share.
Altruism seems to be counter-intuitive from an evolutionary perspective, because it means helping people who won't necessarily improve your chances to survive.
http://io9.com/...
I'd still caution against owning anything remotely intelligent enough to make a claim for its rights, of course, but it seems altruism evolves naturally.
New: In the comments, Timaeus suggested fleshing this out a bit.
While I mean for the focus of the diary to remain upon the altruism-evolving AI, here's an interesting set of degrees of alienness, modified from Speaker for the Dea, by Orson Scott Card (and yes, I know Card is an inexcusable asshole; but some of his ideas I find useful):
Personhood
Degrees of alienness in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead:
• Utlänning, or outlander: the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country.
• Främling: The stranger that we recognize as a person, but of another world.
• Raman: the stranger that we recognize as a person, but of another species.
• Varelse: the true alien, with whom no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.
• Djur: the dire beast, a marauding, unreasoning threat, a monstrous, fearsome murderer.
• Note that here "person" really means "comprehensibly sentient."
The difference between ramen and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
Keep in mind that for voting purposes for their owners, African slaves were classified as 3/5ths of a person. Until we, the majority, decided that they were people.
Also consider the Great Ape Project, whose three basic protections, or rights - prohibition against arbitrary slaughter, prohibition against arbitrary torture, and prohibition against arbitrary imprisonment - have been embraced in such places as Spain and New Zealand. So a bonobo can stand outside the Spanish border and, legally speaking, "it" is a thing - merely property, with no rights. It steps across the border into Spain, and suddenly he is a person.
http://www.greatapeproject.org/
Additionally, consider Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans: Whales and Dolphins (http://cetaceanconservation.com.au/...), which contends:
Based on the principle of the equal treatment of all persons;
Recognizing that scientific research gives us deeper insights into the complexities of cetacean minds, societies and cultures;
Noting that the progressive development of international law manifests an entitlement to life by cetaceans;
We affirm that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and wellbeing.
We conclude that:
Every individual cetacean has the right to life.
No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.
All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.
No cetacean is the property of any State, corporation, human group or individual.
Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.
Cetaceans have the right not to be subject to the disruption of their cultures.
The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this Declaration should be protected under international and domestic law.
Cetaceans are entitled to an international order in which these rights, freedoms and norms can be fully realized.
No State, corporation, human group or individual should engage in any activity that undermines these rights, freedoms and norms.
Nothing in this Declaration shall prevent a State from enacting stricter provisions for the protection of cetacean rights.
We must, for our own sakes, begin to consider the mind-boggling prospect of expanding our definition of personhood outward, to be more thoughtful and inclusive than the old paradigm of person or property.
(I hope I've managed to convey this without sounding preachy.)