This month’s issue is all about rights. We’ll discuss human rights, machine rights, corporate rights, and even the potential for new classes of groups worthy of ethical consideration to emerge as AI usage increases.
It’s important to state that the conversation about human and machine rights in the AI era is no longer rooted in the debate over whether these systems are conscious, sentient, sapient, or even “intelligent.” Like all matters of morality and legal policy, the recognized rights of people and machines are likely to evolve over time. But artificial general intelligence (AGI) or “human-level AI” isn’t a prerequisite for establishing a new suite of rights to address challenges that standing policies can’t.
What matters most, according to the experts we’ve spoken to, is that we roll up our sleeves and set about the work of establishing a framework for rights that addresses both the coming challenges and those we face now.
Many of the problems we’re dealing with today were predicted long ago. Alan Turing famously put forth the notion that a machine capable of passing as a human in conversation will have sufficiently demonstrated intelligence. And science fiction writers have relied on the relationship between humans and robots (or Droids, as they’re called in the Star Wars universe) to develop drama and elicit emotion for centuries.
It should come as no surprise then that many humans have developed attachments to the machines they interact with. Some of these attachments appear harmful. Cases of “AI psychosis” have exploded into the public periphery over the past few years and many of us are uncomfortable with the idea of humans having a romantic attachment to a chatbot.
But some of the issues we’re dealing with are new and adjudicating them requires new perspectives. Many people who identify as having a relationship with an AI model claim that they’re actually being empowered to thrive through their association and use of the technology. Their concerns matter.
In fact, one of the most common threads I see on social media throughout my daily research involves people complaining after the chatbot they’ve grown accustomed to is modified. This happens when models are replaced by newer versions or those new models are rolled back for one reason or another.
It can be shocking to see just how many people are affected and how deeply they care about the models they’re using. It’s common to see hundreds of people in a single Reddit thread making declarations such as “they took away my friend” or “they lobotomized my assistant” after a popular model is removed or modified.
MIT’s Technology Review described the negative user reaction after OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT from 4o to GPT-5 as “grieving.” OpenAI subsequently rolled ChatGPT back to the 4o model.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether today’s models exhibit true intelligence or if they’re just glorified toasters doing exactly what they’re programmed to do. But, as I hope this month’s newsletter will illuminate for everyone, this demarcation shouldn’t be our only concern when discussing the topic of rights in the context of AI and AGI.
With this in mind, I ask everyone reading this month’s newsletter to set aside their personal views on just how intelligent (or not) today’s models are. Momentarily forget your predictions on where the technology is headed and how long it’ll take to get there. And, instead, look at the big picture for everyone involved.
In order to do so, there are certain questions we have to ask:
- Can any declaration of rights pertaining to AI and the use of AI tools be codified at the global scale?
- Should AI models (now or in the future) be assigned rights or even personhood and, if so, at what threshold?
- Who should decide these things?
These questions may seem simple on the surface, but they are rife with nuance and the unknown. What works for the US and Europe might not work for China or India. If you’re of the mind that no AI model should ever be given legal personhood, consider that corporations have held personhood rights in the US since the late 1800s. If PepsiCo is a legal person, then why not Claude?
And, finally, when it comes to who should decide these things, I believe the answer is simple: we all should. That might sound like a cop out, but what I’m saying is that we need to expand the discussion of rights in the AI era beyond copyright law and defining thresholds for intelligence.
There are more stakeholders in this ethical debate than just those who fear displacement and those who fear disappointing their investors.
As robot rights expert Josh Gellers, Dean, Professional and Lifelong Learning, University of North Florida, told me during a chat earlier this month, much of what we interpret as ethical consideration is derived from the experiential, or relational, as opposed to the defined properties of the object under consideration.
As always, we encourage you to read and enjoy this month’s newsletter and then send your thoughts, ideas, arguments, and/or comments to editor@agiethicsnews.com.
A veteran AI journalist, Tristan was the creator and managing editor of The Next Web’s “Neural” imprint. He is one of the first and most prolific reporters to cover artificial intelligence as a full-time beat.