Download Slide 1

01100110111010000
The 3rd Annual Terasem
Colloquium
• The Tao of
Personhood:
The Yin and
Yang of the
PropertyPerson
Continuum
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Challenges
• Expansion of Legal and
Ethical Definitions of
the Person in a
Technical Environment
(“Evolving Notions of
Personhood”)
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
3 Case Scenarios in the not-sodistant future
• Chimpanzee with vocal cords
• Artificial womb – personhood will no
longer depend viability or be tied to
control over one’s own body
• Cyborg soldiers, created with spare
parts
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Divergent Paths of IntelligenceHardware, Software, Human
Three Overlapping Areas of
Evolution
• Sentient Machines (AI)
• Disembodied Entities (Avatars)
• Human Technogenics (or Cyborgs)
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
The NBIC Report
Converging
Technologies for
Improving Human
Performance
Nanotechnology,
Biotechnology, Information
Technology, and Cognitive
Science
NSF/DOC-sponsored report
H
June 2002
Arlington, Virginia
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Some anticipated NIBC payoffs
H
• Improving work efficiency
and learning
• Enhancing sensory and
cognitive capabilities
• Revolutionary changes in
healthcare
• Enhancing human
capabilities for military
purposes
• Nanotechnology-based
implants
• Brain-to-brain and brainto-machine interfaces
(pp. ix-xi)
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Human Intelligence
Augmentation
• to keep up
with AI
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
CogAug & Uploads as Safe AGI
• Perhaps all AGI
should be driven
by mammalorigin brains
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Property – Personhood Dichotomy in Law
• Historically, nonhuman animals have
been considered “property”,
• Slaves, women, and children were
regarded as mere chattel until mid-to-late
1800’s and early 1900’s
• Yet, nonhumans entities, such as
corporations and ships have been
recognized and given rights as “persons”
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Humans and Persons
• All humans are persons BUT, the law
says…
• All “persons” are NOT humans...for
example, corporations,
municipalities, even ships have been
granted status as persons by the US
Supreme Court
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Current Legal Spectrum
H
OH
• U.S. Supreme Court cases provide a
spectrum:
• “Natural” Persons (e.g. aliens, minors,
illegitimate) to
• “Juridical” Persons (e.g., corporations,
labor unions, municipalities,
government units.
H • No current legislative or statutory
definition
NH
2
One Proposed Legal
01100110111010000
(Statutory) Definition
• The term "human being"
means:
(i) any entity possessing one or
more of the higher faculties
H
H
OH NH2
such as: the ability to reason
(including, but not limited to, the
ability to use facts and argue
them, to arrive at conclusions
from premises in a logical
manner, to explain observed
phenomena and to form beliefs
based on facts);
01100110111010000
Definition cont’d
• the ability to evaluate principles and observations
to arrive at reasoned decisions;
• the ability to formulate speech and communicate;
• the ability to write;
• the ability to develop meaningful personal
relationships with other human beings on the basis
of equality;
• the demonstration of awareness of self as a unique
and separate being; the ability to feel concern for
others;
• or any other higher faculty;
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Definition cont’d
• (ii) any viable creature that is the
result of the union of ovum and sperm
of parents who are human beings,
whether or not the union of ovum and
sperm was in utero, and whether or
not the genetic material of the
resulting embryo was scientifically
altered.
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Some Ethical/legal Issues in Converging Tech
we are likely to face over the next 25 years
H
H
OH NH2
•Privacy, confidentiality
•Informed consent (Artificial Research Subjects)
•Augmentation: Enhancement vs. therapeutic, the
President’s commission report
•Emotions, competence, autonomy, and the law
•Capability and culpability (proportional autonomy)
•Synthetic humans: are they persons or property?
•Issues of Identity
•A new lexicon, taxonomy to describe new, complex
relationships. (Personal Cognitive Aides)
•Issues of justice and equity (the “digital divide”)
01100110111010000
Criteria for Personhood?
• All Living Things
• Consciousness
• Sentience
– Peter Singer & Tom Regan
• Self-Awareness
• Rationality
– Descartes
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Joseph Fletcher’s 15 Propositions for Personhood
 1. minimum
intelligence,
 2. self-awareness,
 3. self-control
 4. a sense of time
 5. a sense of futurity
 6. a sense of the past
 7. the capability of
relating to others,
H
H
OH NH2
8. concern for others,
9. communication
10. control of existence
11. curiosity,
12. change and
changeability
 13. balance of
rationality and feeling,
 14. idiosyncrasy
 15. neocortical
functioning





01100110111010000
What Beings Should be Considered Persons?
• Fetuses? (Personhood for Embryos Referendum in
Colorado)
• Animals?
• Artificial Intelligence?
• Categories in between?
• Beings with Numerous Neural
Implants and Augmentations?
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Robot Rights
H
• Which minds have
which rights and
responsibilities?
• Engineering slave
minds vs.
• Flourishing minds,
but within social
H limits?
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Sex and Marriage with Robots?
H
OH
First, AI has to attain the status of legal
personhood before any such thing as marriage
(or any other contractual relationship for that
matter) is recognized.
Secondly, What do humans owe “purpose-built”
machines who begin to reach awareness, or to
so resemble awareness that it becomes a selling
point?
Thirdly, would these robots be sentient -capable of experience pleasure and pain?
Because the act of creating potentially sentient
beings carries with it the corresponding
H
responsibility for their actions and for the impact
on the human community, the biosphere of the
NH2 earth and the universe as a whole.
01100110111010000
What the Courts have said…
• The U.S. Court of International Trade, in Toy
Biz, Inc. v. United States in tariff dispute
• U.S. Customs classified the action figures as
dolls representing only human beings.
• Toy Biz argued that the action figures were toys
or non-human creatures (i.e. robots and
monsters).
• The Court held that the action figures did not
represent human beings because they had
‘robotic’ features or ‘monster-like’ features.
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Identity and Rights
H
H
OH NH2
• Jack-O-Lantern case – US Supreme Court 1922
• 'In rebuilding operations the test is whether the
identity of the vessel has continued, or has been
extinguished…
• This court has not undertaken and will not now
essay to announce rigid definitions of repairs and
new construction; but we do not accept the
suggestion that the two things can be
accurately differentiated by consideration
of the ultimate use to which the vessel is to
be devoted.
• Held despite extensive repairs, identity remained
the same
01100110111010000
Legal and Ethical Considerations
• While the law is well-equipped to hold an
autonomous individual culpable for his or her
actions, the law is not so well designed for such
systems.
• These emerging technologies presents a unique
challenge for the legal profession to help shape
policy, since the technology is cutting-edge and
statutes, case law, or law journals are usually
written after the fact.
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Legal and Ethical Considerations
• Rights of the Individual vs. Rights of Persons
• Persons vs. Property
• Persons -> Persons + Augmentation <Machines
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Legal and Ethical Considerations
H
• One of the questions facing our courts will be:
where do the rights of an autonomous system begin,
assuming that an individual is an inherent part of
that autonomous system?
• Whether using a property-personhood dichotomy
or property-person continuum, the rights of the
individual may change when the human
performance of the individual is enhanced by
machine or other technology.
• This raises issues about privacy, autonomy, and
H
culpability.
OH NH2
Property-Personhood Continuum
(Proposed Legal Paradigm)
01100110111010000
Property
(Inanimate Objects)
Quasi-property
(Chimeric Humanoids)
Fetuses Embryos
Ex Utero
Cognitively impaired
Androids
A/I
H
H
Negative Liberties
Cyborgs
Full Personhood
(Attendant rights
&
responsibilities)
OH NH2 Biotechnology at the Margins of Personhood: An Evolving Legal Paradigm, J. of Evolution and Technology
Recommendations and Conclusions
01100110111010000
As different forms of chimeras and
cyborgs are created in the technical
environments, the courts will be the
ones to determine where these
creations fall on the continuum of
personhood.
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Recommendations and Conclusions
H
H
OH NH2
• The establishment of a common lexicon between
policy makers, implementation agents, and
multidisciplinary users for terms such as
‘autonomous’
• The establishment of new lexicon for the new
relationships that are being created as result of new
technologies, with thoughtful consideration to the
impact on current informed consent policy.
• The possibility of legal reform and the creation of
specialized science courts, where the judges will
have ongoing education and training to recognize
and deal with these new legal issues and categories
that arise from emerging technologies.
01100110111010000
A Double Edged Sword
“Technology has always been a double-edged
sword, empowering both our creative and our
destructive natures. It has brought us longer and
healthier lives, freedom from physical and
mental drudgery, and many new creative
possibilities. Yet it has also introduced new and
salient dangers…Stalin’s tanks and Hitler’s
trains used technology. And we still live today
with sufficient nuclear weapons—not all of
which appear to be well accounted for—to end
all mammalian life on the planet.” – Ray
Kurzweil
H
H
OH NH2
01100110111010000
Thank you for your attention!
• For further info, references contact me at
[email protected]
H
H
OH NH2