Forewarning: I don't really know shit about AI and what constitutes sentience, humanity, etc., so I probably won't be able to add much to the conversation, but I do want y'all's thoughts. Also sorry for the lengthy post. TL;DR at the bottom
For framing, this came from talking about how the Institute in Fallout 4 regards and treats synths.
So someone in a discord server I'm in is adamantly against giving rights to robots. No matter how sentient they are. This comes from the basis that they would have to have been programmed by humans (which have their own biases to input), they will not be able to have true empathy or emotions (saying AI is by default emotionless), and it is irresponsible to let AI get to the point of sentience. Part of their objections were also about imposing humanity on something that could mechanically fail because of how we designed them (their quote was "something that rain could short circuit”) would be cruel.
Now I do agree with them on these points if we are talking about AI as it is right now. I don't believe we currently have the technology to create AI that would be able to be considered sentient like a human. I do deliberately say like a human at this point, but I would feel the same way if an AI had animal-like sentience I guess. I did ask if they would give an ape rights if they were able to more adequately communicate with us and express a desire for those rights, and they said no. We weren't able to discuss that as they had to head off to sleep, so I can't fully comment on that, but I would like that hypothetical to be considered and discussed in regards to robot sentience and rights. We briefly talked about whether AI could consent, but not too much to really flesh out or give arguments for or against. My example was that if I told my AI toaster that I was going to shut it down for an update, and it asked me not to, I would probably have to step back and take a shot of vodka. If we had a situation like the Matrix or Fallout synths, I would not be able to deny them their humanity. If we had AI advanced enough that could become sentient and act and think, on their own, I would not be able to deny them rights if they asked for them. Now there are situations where it would be muddy for me, like if we knew how much their creators still had a hand in their programming and behaviors or such. But if their creators, or especially world governments, are officially stating that certain AIs are acting seemingly of their own volition and against the programming and wills of their creators, I am getting ready to arm the synths (this is also taking into account whether or not the officials might be lying to us about said insubordination, psyops, etc. etc.).
TL;DR, what are y’all’s thoughts on AI sentience and giving AI rights?
Ooh thank you for the response, I actually appreciate the input you brought in
What is your take on what happened to Tay (the Microsoft chatbot from 2016), if you know about it?
Tay was an unsupervised learning based language replication AI. In other words it was essentially a fancy parrot that learned to speak from its twitter feed. It had no ability to think or understand what it was saying, it just tweeted out shit that resembled what people in its feed said. The AI itself was bombarded with all forms of racism and chuddery, so those shitty ideas became the basis for its language replication. Assuming we're taking about AI in the Terminator sense, the Tay situation cant be applied because Tay couldn't do anything but mimic what she heard. A true AI would be able to analyse and recognize the meaning behind the words, rather than just order them into comprehensible sentences.
If someone to use Tay as an argument against AI, they dont really know what theyre talking about. Its like calling a parrot racist because its owner wouldnt stop screaming the n-word.