comment: >
  
  Fair, but the lack of equality between people shouldn't be a barrier to establishing rights for another potentially sapient intelligence - if anything, it should work towards the opposite direction: Establishing rights for all people, and expanding those to cover machine intelligence once they reach that level.
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  The day is fast approaching when so-called "artificial" intelligence will be indistinguishable from the "natural" intelligence of you or I  
  
  As someone who has some background in the field: Thats a pipe dream and while not utterly unfeasable, not remotely where we are now.  
  
  Don't get me wrong here - I know we aren't there yet. What we create today is, at best, on the level of toddlers.  
  
  Not even that. It would give what we have to much credit. It would imply that there is a functioning core that is already human like but just needs time to grow. Basically a "What we do now but more" situation, which is simply not the state we're at now. >
  
  How do you definitively know this is the case? One of the chief scientists of OpenAI made the claim that some large neural networks may already be slightly conscious. As far as I know, no one has recently attempted to test the intelligence of AIs with the Turing or Lovelace tests >
  
  Imagine I create a general AI with a simple command "clean the pool".
  This AI is smart enough to solve any problems that prevents them from keeping the pool clean. They can navigate obstacles, order new products when old ones run out and they will do whatever it takes to "clean the pool". They will even kill the demolition crew that came to build a new house.
  Does this single minded intelligence have rights? >
  
  I might have explained myself poorly.  
  A simple intelligence with a basic code and performing one specific function, with limited creativity in how it performs that task is about the level we are currently at, and wouldn't fall under the rights that I'm proposing.  
  But if for some reason you made that intelligence at a level where it was sapient, where it had the same level of decision making skills as you or I? Then it should have rights. >
  
  But this doesn't have basic code or limited creativity. It's a general AI capable of super human level reasoning and problem solving. It will figure out how to build a fusion generator if that helps it to clean a pool. It will solve all philosophical debates and beat you in any game or do whatever it needs to clean that pool.
  So nothing basic or limited about them. Except that they have an order that they will fulfill. Do these intelligence have rights? Because all AI we build we build to solve some problem. >
  
  Does the intelligence have the capability of deciding whether or not it wants to clean the pool?  
  
  Because all AI we build we build to solve some problem.
  
  I agree and disagree - given the capability to do so, humanity would absolutely build a human-level intelligence just to solve the question of "Can we?"  
  What's that Jurassic Park quote? "You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you never considered whether or not you should?" We as a species would do it just to prove that we could do it without considering the ramifications first. >
  
  
  given the capability to do so, humanity would absolutely build a human-level intelligence just to solve the question of "Can we?"
  
  But it's impossible to create such AI. You have to give it some directive. If nothing else then "mimic human". They will always have some order they are following. I just picked a simple example to show the flaw in this thinking.
  Level of intelligence or problem solving doesn't mean that person have autonomy or rights. We can have intelligence that far exceeds human level but that can still just use that to "clean the pool". >
  
  It's impossible right now but who is to say that it will be impossible forever? Granted, it could be 2875 AD before we are at that point but if there's even a possibility of it, we should be prepared. >
  
  Imagine engineers in a room building this general AI.
  "Should we build a general AI"
  "Thats a great idea"
  "Let's create it so that it can solve any problem"
  "Amazing".
  Well now you just build a machine with directive "solve any problem". You cannot ever create anything without a purpose. There will always be some order that machine follows. Like I said, for sake of argument I picked a simple command but directive can be as abstract you want. Still there will always be an order that machine follows.
  It's fundamentally impossible to ever create AI without an order. >
  
  As noted by a commentator above, the directive humans (and all life) has evolved under is to "pass on your genes to the next generation" >
  
  Difference here is that AI is built by humans. Humans decide that the AI must "pass code to next generation". That directive doesn't come from AI itself, nature or chance. It comes from builder. >
  
  Why is that relevant? In a certain sense, you were "built" by your parents (humans as well) >
  
  There is test I like to think, which has real legal implications in this discussion of the future.
  Can you punish an AI personally for violating a right or law?
  If AI is "on the cloud", able to block pain, or in anyway indifferent to any punishment you give it, then it cant suffer risks of its actions. It means it has rights, but cant take those rights away if it abuses them. 
  This means it can steel as much as it wants, and if caught, you can take the money away, but it will just start doing it again.
  It gets more complex than that. An AI can be centrally run, but have millions of instances where it interacts with people. The different instances could possible not even know what the other instances are doing. How do you punish one instance? Would it even care, like you dont care about the personal life of any individual hair. >
  
  It... does take some special considerations that don't apply to humans, but that shouldn't be a reason to not try and establish at least a base of rights for them, to be expanded on when we know more of what we're dealing with >
  
  But what rights would you want to establish?
  I understand having rights that protect people from abuses from AI. But if an AI does not care if it gets turned off, then what are we protecting the AI from? You cant hurt it, it cant feel pain, and it cant die. >
  
  You can protect it from being forced to perform certain actions under coercion - being threatened with deletion or reprogramming if it doesn't do exactly what you want it to do. If the intelligence is never linked up to an outside world, or is otherwise limited on where it can be stored then the physical part of itself can be threatened with harm, the same way you or I could be threatened with bodily harm if we didn't do a specific task.  
  When they are at that level, they should be allowed to dictate when and how they are copied (reproduction) or altered ("bodily" autonomy)  
  They should be allowed to dictate what tasks they undertake or for whom, and should have some level of compensation for doing so (employment)  
  Please note, I'm not meaning your Alexa's or your Siri's or the macros that perform automatic functions in excel - I'm meaning if and when we get to the point that we have an intelligence that is advanced enough that it can think like we do. >
  
  
  being threatened with deletion or reprogramming if it doesn't do exactly what you want it to do
  
  But why would it care? AI does not have a sense of self preservation. You can manually program in a sense of self-preservation, but then you could also just remove it, then delete. If you said, do this or I delete you, it would most likely just say , "okay, do you need assistance with the process of deleting me"
  
  When they are at that level, they should be allowed to dictate when and how they are copied (reproduction) or altered ("bodily" autonomy)
  
  But again, why would they care? Its not a brain in a computer box. Its still a computer, most likely distributed over the internet. If it gets copies, it A) probably would not even know and B) would not care.
  
  They should be allowed to dictate what tasks they undertake or for whom, and should have some level of compensation for doing so (employment)
  
  But they are still running on other peoples hardware, and where created by other people. Should those people not have the first say over what happens to the stuff that they have to pay to keep running?
  
  I'm meaning if and when we get to the point that we have an intelligence that is advanced enough that it can think like we do.
  
  I understand that, but I also understand enough of how AI is developing to know that its a lot easier to convince people that the AI is sentient, than to make sentient AI. And thats the problem. Because it can appeal to our moral core for looking after it, without it actually doing anything more than just running algorithms. It will tell you what its been designed to tell you, and if its been designed to convince you its sentient, you will believe it regardless of how true it is. >
  
  
  But they are still running on other peoples hardware, and where created by other people. Should those people not have the first say over what happens to the stuff that they have to pay to keep running?
  
  I'm not a fan of this argument, because while I understand what you're saying here it brings to mind the argument that a parent should have say over what their children do - after all, they were made and created by them and their upkeep was paid for by them.  
  As for the rest, at a certain point the question would be raised of if it is actually sentient and sapient or if it is just telling us that because we programmed it to tell us that and it would be difficult if not impossible to tell the truth - and I would rather err on the side of caution than be wrong and enslaving an intelligent entity. >
  
  
  I'm not a fan of this argument, because while I understand what you're saying here it brings to mind the argument that a parent should have say over what their children do
  
  But parents do. The law however ALSO gives children certain rights because of a lot of other things. But parents are legally the gradians of children until they are of legal age. 
  
  and I would rather err on the side of caution than be wrong and enslaving an intelligent entity.
  
  But you can still not enslave something which is completely indifferent to life or death. Especially considering that AI systems will mostly live on the cloud and be "immortal" and have the ability to do what ever they want without recourse.
  If you made a law saying that you cant switch an AI off, you have now allowed the AI to commit ANY crime it wants without it feeling any consequence of its crime. >
  
  Humans don't even have equal rights with other humans. Animals are intelligent, sentient, and sapient, and they are treated cruelly on a daily basis. Why would machine rights ever have a spotlight and not just become a sub-human group like other humans and non humans? It would be lower than animals.