0:11

Welcome to the Sentience Institute podcast,

0:13

and to our 20th episode. I'm

0:16

Michael Deli , Yvo strategy lead and

0:18

researcher at Sentence Institute on

0:20

the Sentience Institute podcast. We interview

0:23

activists, entrepreneurs, and researchers

0:25

about the most effective strategies to expand

0:27

humanities moral circle. Our guest

0:29

for today is David Gun. David

0:32

is an award-winning educator, scholar,

0:34

and author specializing in the philosophy

0:37

and ethics of emerging technology. He

0:39

is the author of over 90 scholarly

0:41

articles and book chapters, and as

0:44

published 12 internationally recognized books including

0:46

the Machine Question, Critical Perspectives

0:49

on ai, Robots and Ethics of

0:51

Remix, Ethics and Aesthetics.

0:54

After remix and Robot

0:56

rights, he currently holds the

0:58

position of distinguished teaching professor in

1:01

the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois

1:03

University in usa. All

1:06

right . I'm joined by David Gun. David, thank you so much

1:08

for joining us on the Sentience Institute podcast.

1:10

Yeah, thank you for having me. Good to be here.

1:12

Great. Great to have you. So , uh,

1:14

I'd like to start with a question , uh, about terminology.

1:17

And I should preface this by saying I

1:19

actually know your answer, I think because I heard

1:21

it in your interview with the Ben Byford , um,

1:24

with Ben Byford on the Machine Ethics Podcast

1:26

in 2020. Uh , but I think it's a

1:28

good place for our listeners to start. So

1:30

why do you call it robot

1:32

rights and not artificial intelligence riots

1:35

sentence , or something else like that?

1:37

Yeah, so it's a really good question, and I

1:39

think I can answer it with three sort

1:42

of ways of, of directing your

1:45

, uh, you know, way of thinking about

1:47

this. First of all, it's

1:49

just, it's an alliterative statement, right?

1:51

Robot rights. So just the alliteration

1:53

sort of makes it easy to say artificial

1:56

intelligence rights seems a little clumsy, and

1:58

as a result, robot rights is pretty easy

2:00

for a person to sort of rattle

2:02

off, and it has a alliterative

2:05

, sort of poetic feel to it because

2:07

of the way it sort of rolls out of your

2:09

mouth and , uh, sounds when you hear

2:11

it. The second reason is that

2:13

this terminology is not mine. Um

2:16

, this is terminology that came to me from other

2:18

people who preceded me in this work.

2:21

Either , uh, legal scholars or

2:23

people in philosophy or in

2:25

the area of artificial intelligence and ethics, but

2:28

they were the ones that began using this terminology.

2:31

And so my engagement

2:33

with it was to sort of pick up the thread and

2:36

carry it further. And since that was

2:38

the terminology that they had already employed, I

2:40

sort of inherited that terminology. Lastly,

2:43

and I think most importantly, the

2:45

difference between the word robot and

2:48

artificial intelligence is something

2:50

that we oftentimes, you know, struggle with and

2:52

try to figure out where to draw the line. And is

2:54

it cloud based application a robot? Is

2:56

it just ai? You know, how do we,

2:58

we sort of sort these things. The

3:01

important thing for me is that AI

3:03

is the result of a academic

3:07

workshop held in the mid 1950s in

3:10

Dartmouth College. Robot, on the

3:12

other hand, is the result of science

3:14

fiction. It comes to us from the 1920

3:17

stage play rur , and

3:19

it was formulated and

3:22

really was a reuse of a

3:24

check term robota , meaning worker

3:26

or slave laborer , uh, by

3:28

Carl Chap . And already in that

3:30

play, which not only gave us the idea of

3:32

the robot, but the word robot, the

3:35

robots are already subjugated to human

3:37

masters, and there's this uprising.

3:39

So not only does that set the sort of template

3:41

for future science fiction, but

3:44

it also gives us this notion of the robot

3:46

as an enslaved or

3:49

a servant type , you

3:51

know, figure or individual. And

3:53

so the robot rights , uh,

3:56

idea sort of fits in that pattern,

3:58

beginning with topics play, and

4:00

the way in which that has developed not only in

4:03

subsequent science fiction, but also in subsequent

4:05

writings on the legal and

4:07

the moral aspects of these

4:09

technologies and the way they connect with us.

4:11

Yeah, that , that makes sense. I

4:14

, I think for the rest of the interview, I'll probably use

4:17

robots and maybe have that

4:19

, um, apply to AI as well , uh,

4:21

just as , as shorthand, but in

4:24

a sense, they're not really interchangeable.

4:26

I , I feel, is that, does that make sense to

4:28

you? Because AI sort of , um, brings

4:31

, uh, an image of , uh,

4:33

an intelligence that's not , that's not necessarily tied

4:35

to a physical body, whereas robot seems to

4:37

imply it's tied to a physical body. Does that

4:39

sound about right?

4:41

It sounds about right, but I , I will say

4:43

that this idea that the

4:45

intelligence is disembodied, it's almost a

4:47

kind of transcendentalist way of thinking that's

4:50

almost religious ouris are

4:52

embodied, right? Even the cloud has a body, it's

4:55

a server connected to, to wires and

4:57

to fiber network cables and

4:59

things like this. So there is an embodiment

5:01

even for the so-called disembodied

5:04

ai. It's just that that body doesn't

5:06

look like our bodies. And so I

5:08

find this to be a useful distinction, the embodiment

5:11

distinction, but I also find it a bit troubling because

5:13

it leads us to think that the AI has

5:15

this kind of transcendental feature to it, and

5:18

it really doesn't, when we talk about the, you

5:20

know, resources of the earth about power,

5:23

about , uh, environmental impact and

5:25

all these other things that AI certainly

5:27

contributes to carbon and to climate

5:29

change. And that has to do because

5:31

of the way it is embodied and where it is

5:33

embodied.

5:34

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for mentioning that. So

5:37

in 2018, you wrote a paper called

5:39

The Other Question, Can Robot, Sorry.

5:42

Can and Should Robots Have Rights? And

5:44

the other question here being in reference to

5:46

the main question most people focus on when

5:48

they think about AI and robots, which is about

5:50

how they affect us, for example

5:52

, um, AI safety being a hot topic at

5:55

the moment, that's, that's mostly about how an

5:57

AI affects humans. And the

5:59

, the other question, I guess is more focused on the

6:02

interests of the robots themselves. So

6:05

you wrote that there's an important difference between

6:07

the can and the should here. So can you

6:09

start by talking about that?

6:10

Right. So I'll make two distinctions, which I

6:12

think will help sort this out. Uh , in more

6:14

philosophy, we distinguish the moral

6:17

agent from the moral patient. A

6:19

moral agent is someone who can act in

6:21

such a way that is either good, bad, or

6:24

is morally culpable or

6:26

praiseworthy, whatever the case is, a moral patient

6:28

is the recipient of that action. Now,

6:30

in our world, we are both moral agents

6:33

and moral patients. We can do good and

6:35

bad, we can suffer good and bad,

6:37

but there are some things that are moral patients

6:39

and not moral agents animals, for

6:41

example, we don't hold the dog responsible

6:44

for barking at the postman, but we do hold

6:47

the postman responsible for kicking and

6:49

injuring the dog, right? And the dog therefore

6:51

can be the recipient of an action that is either

6:53

good or bad. And as you said, I saw

6:55

a lot of people putting a

6:58

lot of the research they were doing on

7:00

the side of agency. And the question was,

7:02

how can we ensure that these devices,

7:05

these tools, these instruments, these

7:07

artifacts are employed in our

7:09

world in a way that has the right outcomes,

7:12

that doesn't disadvantage people, that doesn't create bad

7:14

outcomes, whatever the cases , that's an agency question.

7:17

My question, the other question was, well, okay,

7:19

that's great, but what is

7:21

the status of these things? What is , what is

7:23

the social moral, legal position of

7:26

these devices that are increasingly intelligent and

7:28

socially and interactive? And

7:30

how do we grapple with the moral patency

7:33

question of these machines? And then when

7:35

go to the next stage is the

7:37

can should distinction. And this

7:40

is really derived from David Hume. David Hume

7:42

says, You know, you cannot derive ought from is

7:44

, it's a very famous item in

7:46

, in David Hume's thinking, but a lot of people have picked it up

7:48

and developed it to us in, you

7:50

know, since that time, the can and

7:53

should question is really this, Can

7:55

robots have rights? Yeah. All you have

7:57

to do is make a law that says robots have rights.

8:00

Now, should you do that is another

8:02

question. So the ability to

8:04

do so maybe is entirely

8:06

feasible and very easy to

8:09

answer that question. The moral question,

8:11

the should question is a little more complicated. And

8:13

I think that's where we get into the weeds on , um,

8:16

how we want to shape the world that we live

8:18

in and how we integrate these things alongside

8:21

us in our social reality.

8:23

Mm-hmm . So I'll

8:26

jump the gun a little bit, and just because you mentioned it and

8:28

ask , uh, what are some reasons

8:30

why robots shouldn't have rights? Uh

8:32

, what are what are some arguments one might use?

8:34

So one of the strongest arguments is that they

8:37

machines, right? They're not people,

8:39

they're not human beings, they're not animals. They

8:42

should, you know, they're just artifacts and therefore they

8:44

are things. We may have this

8:46

distinction that comes to us from the Romans , uh, from

8:49

Gaas in in particular, that, you

8:51

know, actions that are moral or

8:53

legal in nature have two kinds

8:56

of objects or two kinds of , uh, entities.

8:58

There is either persons or things. And

9:01

so in the category of persons, we put you

9:03

and I and we put corporations

9:06

and we put maybe some animals, but

9:08

we don't generally put technological objects. Those

9:10

are things that's a strong argument based

9:12

on this ontology that we've

9:14

inherited from the Romans and the way in which

9:16

our legal structures especially have

9:19

operationalized this way of dividing things into

9:21

persons or property. Another argument

9:23

is that if we give

9:26

robots some kind of moral or

9:28

legal standing, we have complicated

9:31

our legal system in ways that

9:33

goes beyond what maybe we

9:35

would like to handle, and

9:37

that it maybe doesn't lend anything

9:40

very useful to the way that

9:42

we decide these relationships. Those

9:45

are usually the two big ones.

9:47

Mm . When you make those arguments

9:49

or when , when you put those forward, it makes me think

9:51

of , uh, these are some of the arguments I've heard in

9:53

relation to why when people say non-human

9:56

animals shouldn't have rights, it , it

9:58

complicates the legal system. Um, it

10:00

, uh, it's, yeah. So that , that , that

10:02

sounds familiar, but what are , what

10:05

are the , um, best arguments for why robots should

10:07

have rights?

10:08

So there's a number of arguments, and I

10:10

don't wanna try to be exhausted here, but let

10:12

me cover some of the important ones

10:14

that have been circulating. Um, the

10:17

literature in this field has absolutely exploded

10:20

, um, in the last decade. And

10:22

when I started working on this back

10:24

in the early, well,

10:27

mid , mid two , you know, 2006 I started First

10:29

book comes out in 2012. So in those early

10:31

years, it was really easy to keep track of

10:34

who was arguing what, because the number

10:36

of different arguments and circulation were pretty manageable.

10:39

By the time I get to robot rights in 2018,

10:41

this thing is spinning out of control

10:43

because a lot of people find

10:46

reason to engage the question and

10:48

to deliver their own sort of response

10:51

to it. So let me just hit a few

10:53

reasons why we might want to

10:55

do this. One is directly derived

10:58

from what we've learned in the animal

11:00

rights experience. So in

11:02

animal rights, we know Jeremy , Jeremy Bentham

11:04

really , uh, is the pivot, right? And he said it's

11:06

not, can they think, can they reason, but can

11:08

they suffer? Are they sentis ? And that

11:11

opened up the moral circle to include

11:13

things that had been previously excluded.

11:15

It had been, up until that point, a very

11:17

human-centric kind of moral universe.

11:20

And when we start to engage

11:22

in the animal question, we widen

11:24

that circle to include other

11:26

creatures that are non-human. And the reason why

11:29

we included animals in the moral circle,

11:31

whether you're following Peter Singer or

11:33

Tom Regan , or one of the other innovators in

11:36

animal rights, is because of

11:38

Sentis , because of the experience the

11:41

animal has of pain

11:43

or pleasure. And you can see just recently

11:45

with Blake Lemo , he was

11:47

talking to Lambda, and Lambda, he

11:50

said, is sentient , which led him to believe

11:52

that Lambda needed to have rights protected

11:54

for it because it was another kind

11:56

of sentient creature. So we use sentience

11:59

as a benchmark, and the question is, how

12:01

can you tell whether an AI or a robot is

12:04

sentient ? Well, that takes you back to the tour test

12:06

because you can't necessarily look

12:08

inside and know exactly what it's doing. You

12:10

can know some of what's going on, but

12:12

really what Blake Lamoin did is learn

12:14

from the behavioral experience that

12:16

it was exhibited to him in the conversational interactions

12:19

that he had with Lambda. So that's

12:21

one reason why people argue for giving robots

12:24

rights, this notion that they'll be at

12:26

some point either sentient or conscious

12:29

or some of these other benchmarks that make something

12:31

available to having standing

12:34

status and need for protection. Another

12:37

argument, and this comes from Kate Darling, who I

12:39

think was really innovative in this area by using Ks

12:41

indirect , uh, duties argument , uh,

12:44

Kant , unlike Bentham, was no animal rights advocate. Kant

12:46

thought animals were just mechanisms like Da Hart

12:48

did. But he argued you should not hurt animals, because

12:51

when you do so, you dease

12:53

yourself, you are corrupting

12:56

your own moral character. You're corrupting

12:58

your own moral education and

13:00

providing a bad example for other people. And

13:03

so indirectly, you're harming somebody

13:06

else if you harm an animal. And

13:08

Kate Darling says, you know, this is one way

13:10

of thinking about why we don't want to harm

13:12

the robot because of the example

13:15

it sets, because of the , uh,

13:17

way in which it could corrupt our own

13:19

moral characters. And she

13:21

uses the constant direct duties argument to make a

13:24

case for the rights of robots as

13:26

a way of protecting our social mechanisms

13:28

, uh, the way that we relate to each other, either morally

13:31

or legally. A third argument

13:33

for doing this, and this is more

13:35

in line with where I take it , um, in

13:37

my own research, is that the

13:40

properties, ascensions and consciousness have

13:42

traditionally been really good benchmarks for

13:44

things like animal rights and , and items like that.

13:46

But I come out of environmental ethics and

13:49

in environmental ethics, you don't

13:51

harm a mountain, dirt

13:54

does not feel pain. A waterway

13:56

does not experience this pleasure. Nevertheless,

13:59

these are part of our

14:01

integral experience on this

14:04

planet, and we have responsibilities

14:06

to the other entities that occupy

14:09

this fragile planet with us. And I think climate

14:11

change is a really good example of

14:13

how we can screw that up if we assume

14:16

wrongly, that these things are just raw materials

14:18

that we can utilize to our benefit and

14:21

artifacts may also play a role

14:23

in our social world in a way that we

14:25

need to think more creatively about

14:27

how we craft our moral

14:30

responsibilities and our legal responsibilities

14:32

to others. And that is

14:34

what I'm calling a relational approach

14:36

to moral status. That it's

14:38

not what the thing is, but how

14:40

it stands in relationship to us and

14:43

how we interact with it on

14:45

a scale that treats

14:47

these other entities as

14:49

fellow travelers, as kin . And

14:52

how we can come up with ways

14:54

of integrating not just

14:56

the natural objects of the environment, but

14:58

also the artifacts that we create in

15:01

our moral universe, in our legal

15:03

universe in a way that makes sense for

15:06

us, but also for our future

15:08

generations and for the kind

15:10

of environment and the kind of world

15:12

we want to occupy.

15:14

That was great. Thanks David. There's , there's

15:16

a lot. Uh , I wanted to, to , um,

15:18

mention from that first , uh, that you

15:20

mentioned Blake Lemo and Lambda. Uh , we actually

15:22

spoke to , uh, Thomas Metzinger in our last

15:25

podcast episode that came out last week, and we

15:27

, we talked about that topic as well. Um,

15:29

you, so the second,

15:31

the second argument you made about if

15:35

we treat robots in

15:37

, in a bad way, in the same way that if we treat animals

15:39

in a bad way, that might have repercussions

15:42

for , um, for how

15:44

it affects us and how it affects humans in general. Uh

15:46

, now it sounds like even

15:49

if there is, even

15:51

if robots are not currently sentient , even if

15:53

robots maybe even can never be sentient, that

15:56

would still remain an argument in favor

15:58

of giving robots rights. Uh , does , does

16:00

that sound, does that sound right? Um , yes.

16:02

Yeah. Great. Yeah, sure.

16:04

And , uh, the , the last point you mentioned

16:07

it again, it seems to be coming back

16:09

to , uh, how , um,

16:12

how the way we interact with robots

16:15

affects , affects humans. Uh , I

16:17

know you've spoken about the case of the Wongan Nui

16:19

River in New Zealand being granted legal person

16:21

who writes as an analogy. And I think you said

16:23

something like, it's not that people are arguing that

16:25

the river is sentient , it's just

16:27

that that's a tool in our current legal system , uh,

16:30

to get protection. And then it's for instrumental

16:32

purposes or for , um, orsic

16:36

purposes. It's how , uh, that

16:38

, uh, affects humans. Uh

16:40

, so giving robots, right, giving

16:42

robot rights, sorry, giving

16:44

robots rights now might therefore

16:47

be an instrumental tool in the same way. Yeah,

16:49

I , I think a really good example is a recently

16:51

12 states in the US made

16:55

some legislative , uh, decisions

16:58

and , and put into act , uh, some laws that

17:01

try to deal with these personal

17:03

delivery robots that are being deployed on the city streets.

17:06

And they decided that for

17:09

the purposes of figuring out

17:11

right of way and who can go

17:13

in the crosswalk and who can't go in the crosswalk

17:15

and things like this, it made sense to

17:17

extend to the robot the rights of a pedestrian.

17:20

Now, that's not making a decision about robotic

17:22

personhood. That's not making a , you

17:24

know, a distinction that would grant personhood

17:27

to the robot. It's just saying rights

17:30

are the way that we figure out how to integrate

17:32

things in situations

17:34

where you have competing claims, powers, privileges,

17:36

or immunities coming from different actors

17:39

in the social environment. And

17:41

one way in which we negotiate this is

17:43

by granting rights, by giving something a

17:45

right, a privilege, a power, a claim, or

17:47

an immunity. It has to be at least , uh,

17:50

respected by some, by someone else in

17:52

that social environment. Yeah . So this

17:54

is just a tool we have to try to

17:56

develop ways of responding

17:59

to these challenges that allow

18:01

us to occupy space and

18:04

work with. And alongside these

18:06

various things,

18:07

I , I think I a pretty clear example of

18:09

that is , um, how we corporations have

18:11

rights and they , they're clearly not , um, senti , they're

18:13

clearly not , um, persons, but in , in the eyes of the

18:16

law, often they are treated like they are , uh,

18:18

persons in , in a lot of

18:19

Ways. Can I say the , Yeah . The real trouble here.

18:21

I think the , the real point of, of debate

18:24

and contention is the fact that we're

18:26

trying to work with two legal categories that

18:28

are mutually exclusive person or thing.

18:31

And as I said before, this comes

18:33

from 2000 years ago when Gaas developed

18:36

this distinction in his own , uh,

18:38

legal thinking. And our western legal

18:40

systems have worked with us for a long time, and

18:43

it's worked pretty well, but that's why the corporation got

18:45

moved from a thing to a person because we wanted

18:47

to be able to sue it. We wanted it to

18:49

be able to stand before

18:51

the court as a subject and

18:53

not just an object. And so this

18:56

whole debate is about how do we negotiate this

18:58

distinction person, On the one hand that

19:01

is an subject before the

19:03

law, an object or thing on the

19:05

other hand, and it may be the case that we just

19:07

need a better moral ontology, we just

19:09

might need something that gives our

19:12

legal system a little more latitude with

19:14

regards to the kinds of entities that

19:16

can occupy these

19:19

kinds of , uh, positions in our world.

19:20

Yeah. When , when it comes to say,

19:23

non-human animal rights, I do like Peter Singer's

19:25

take on what that might look like. It's, it's

19:27

not that we're asking for non-humans to have the

19:29

right to, to drive or to vote, for example,

19:31

We're just asking that , um, their interests are

19:34

considered they're similar interests. Um, for

19:37

example, there , uh, the right

19:39

to not be harmed. Uh

19:41

, so yeah. With that in mind, do you have any

19:43

thoughts about what robot rights might look

19:45

like? Um, or what, what

19:48

perhaps one of your most ideal scenarios

19:50

might be for how that might look

19:52

in practice? Uh , you've sort of talked about that a little

19:55

bit, I guess. Um, but also just given that

19:57

, uh, robots may have very different interests

19:59

to us, let's say in the case where they do

20:01

become sentient. And I'd just like to nudge you as well to

20:03

maybe mention , uh, camel , uh,

20:06

maax paper, humans, Neanderthals, robots

20:08

, uh, and rights. I think that

20:10

that seems relevant here as well. That's talking

20:12

about moral patients, US agencies . So , um,

20:15

yeah, please, please talk about that a little bit.

20:17

Yeah. So, you know, this is

20:19

where I think the analogy with animal

20:21

rights starts to, if not

20:23

break down , at least reach a

20:25

limit. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> animals, I

20:27

think we can say have interests and we

20:29

can guess pretty well what

20:32

they are, even though it's guesswork , we can

20:34

pretty much sort of figure out pretty

20:37

well for ourselves, you know, what the dog

20:39

has as an interest, food, a walk, whatever

20:42

the case is, right? Our current technologies

20:44

don't have interests, and if we're

20:46

looking, looking for interests, we might be

20:49

barking up the wrong tree at some point in

20:51

the future, that's possible. But

20:53

I don't want to hold out this

20:55

expectation that we should wait for that to happen before

20:58

we engage these questions. Um

21:00

, if that does happen, then we maybe finding

21:02

ourselves having to deal with this

21:04

, uh, analogy to the animal much more

21:07

directly. But I think for now, the

21:09

real issue is we have interests and

21:11

these objects are in our world, and

21:14

we need to figure out how to integrate

21:16

them in our moral and legal systems

21:18

in a way that makes sense for us. And

21:21

just responding to these

21:23

devices as if they were tools or instruments

21:26

doesn't seem to work.

21:28

In other words, the robot is sort of in between

21:30

the thing and the person, and it resists

21:33

both reification and personification.

21:36

And that's the problem, right? That's, that's

21:38

the challenge and the opportunity before

21:40

us. How do we scale existing

21:43

moral and legal systems that work

21:46

with these two categories for something

21:48

that seems to resist one or

21:50

the other? And I think what

21:52

Camille has done in his work on

21:55

, uh, the subject of moral patency is

21:57

really instructive because he's saying,

21:59

We're not looking for solitude. We're

22:01

not looking for robots to be like human

22:03

beings and therefore have those same rights

22:06

as a human being would have. Robot

22:08

rights are not the same thing as the , as a

22:10

set of human rights. Human rights are very specific to

22:12

a singular species. The human being

22:15

robots may have some overlapping powers,

22:17

claims, privileges, or immunities that

22:19

would need to be recognized by human beings,

22:22

but their grouping or

22:24

sets of rights will be perhaps very different.

22:26

And I think Camille's point is

22:28

that difference actually matters here. And

22:31

that if we're looking for similitude, we

22:33

are going to , uh, actually paint

22:36

ourselves into a corner on the subject

22:38

where , uh, we'll be really missing

22:40

what's important. And I think the

22:43

focus on difference and how to

22:45

integrate what is different into

22:47

, uh, our current way of

22:49

thinking about our relationships to other

22:52

kinds of things will actually help.

22:54

And again, I think environmental ethics is a really

22:56

good guide here, because

22:58

we don't want to think about

23:00

the water like us. It's

23:03

not like us, right? What is the

23:05

water to us and why is

23:07

it different? And how is that difference important to

23:10

our way of engaging it

23:13

and living alongside it?

23:13

Yeah. So to , to go back to that paper,

23:16

and there's one one point I found , uh, kind of

23:18

interesting. Uh , so they used

23:20

, uh, uh, Neals as

23:23

, um, as an analogy, I guess for, for

23:25

robots in that there seems

23:27

to be some evidence I might , I'm not really familiar.

23:29

I just , um, going off that paper that

23:32

, uh, ne the tools might not have

23:34

, um, uh, moral agency

23:36

, uh, per se . They might have moral agency

23:38

, uh, correct me if I'm,

23:40

I'm mistaken here, but they , they're arguing that , uh,

23:44

it , it might , um, we

23:46

might want to treat Neos if they were in our

23:48

current society, in the

23:51

legal system, treat them more as say

23:53

we would a human child in that , um,

23:55

what we do to them , uh, matters

23:58

and what, but we might not necessarily hold them

24:00

, um, accountable or to blame for

24:02

the actions they do , uh, to us. Does

24:04

that , um, sound about right and is , if so,

24:06

is that a reasonable analogy for how we

24:09

might treat robots in a legal system?

24:10

Right. So lemme say , uh, two things.

24:12

One, a disclaimer. I know very little about Neanderthals

24:15

<laugh> , so I'm not , I'm not gonna speak directly to the same page.

24:17

Yeah , we're on the same page there . Um , so I can't

24:19

really enlighten you in any appreciable

24:22

way in that regard. Um

24:24

, but I will say, and this again, I I'm

24:26

gonna go back to environmental ethics. Um, Thomas

24:29

Birch, who was an environmental ethicist , um,

24:31

said that, you know, what we're talking about

24:33

is power. When you talk about widening

24:36

the moral circle or widening

24:38

the inclusion of what is on

24:40

the inside and what's on the outside , um,

24:43

someone in

24:45

the inside decides whether or not to expand

24:47

the circle, right? And that is

24:49

a power relationship where those in

24:51

power extend to those without

24:53

power inclusion. You

24:56

can see this already in previous rights

24:58

, uh, expansion, Mary Walstone

25:00

Craft , who wrote the vindication of the rights of women,

25:03

had to pitch her argument to the men

25:05

who were in power and had the right

25:07

to them because they were the ones who

25:09

could expand the circle to include women in

25:12

moral and legal consideration. The

25:15

same with animals, right? In order to

25:17

include animals, someone had to pitch

25:19

an argument on behalf of the animals, but

25:22

they were inside the circle to begin with, otherwise

25:24

they would not have been able to make the argument

25:26

for expanding that circle. And

25:29

I think this is the same thing we see playing

25:32

out with, you know, rights expansion beyond

25:34

, um, even animals. That

25:37

this is a dynamic that is

25:39

very much related to power and politics,

25:42

and how this plays out is really

25:44

something that is in our hands because

25:46

we're the insiders. We're the ones

25:48

who make these decisions. So how

25:51

robots get integrated into our moral and

25:53

legal systems is entirely ours

25:55

to decide, and therefore, we

25:57

need to engage this responsibly

25:59

in ways that really adhere to

26:02

our moral standards and protect our

26:04

futures.

26:05

You've, you've said that to change the topic a

26:07

little bit , uh, you've said that AI ethics , um,

26:10

is often dominated by , um, western thinking,

26:12

and that expanding the dialogue to include other ways

26:15

of thinking, like, for example, indigenous or

26:17

aism could be useful. In

26:19

some of our research at Sentience Institute, we,

26:22

we found that people who reported more

26:24

belief in , uh, that artificial

26:26

beings like ais and robots, if

26:29

they have reported belief that those

26:32

entities can have spirits, they also tended

26:34

to extend more moral consideration

26:36

to them, which , um, doesn't sound that

26:38

surprising, I guess, but it's

26:41

an example of how maybe some other ways of

26:43

thinking might actually be , um, beneficial

26:45

to bring into this discussion. So do

26:47

you have any other examples of how, say

26:50

bringing indigenous animism or

26:52

other ways of thinking into the AI

26:54

ethics conversation might be useful?

26:56

Yeah, so lemme just say that a lot of the

26:58

AI ethics , uh, discourse has

27:01

been distinctly western, right? We've used

27:03

consequentialism, we've used deontology,

27:05

we've used virtue ethics, we've

27:07

used traditions that are very much grounded

27:10

in a Western European Christian sort

27:12

of tradition. And there's nothing wrong with

27:14

that except that we've gotta recognize that that's

27:16

not a universal position, right?

27:18

That's very particular. And for people

27:21

who live in the global north and have

27:23

grown up with these philosophical and religious traditions,

27:25

it may make sense, but the

27:28

rest of the world looks at things from

27:30

different perspectives and does

27:32

things , um, that do not necessarily

27:35

track with what comes out

27:37

of a Western experience. And

27:39

so, I think you're exactly right. There's ways in which we can

27:41

look beyond , um, our own

27:43

way of thinking about these matters and do

27:46

so to help inform this in a more

27:48

global perspective and draw on

27:50

a wider range of human wisdom as

27:52

a way of developing responses to this. Now,

27:55

I'll caution, we gotta be careful here because

27:57

this could turn into Orientalism, right? This

27:59

is one of the premier sort of

28:01

colonialist kinds of gestures. You go

28:03

out to the other and you take from them

28:05

what you think is gonna help you , um,

28:08

in your own endeavors. And we've

28:10

gotta protect against that kind of gesture.

28:12

It's not about going

28:15

and colonizing these other ways

28:17

of thinking , um, in order to mine from

28:19

them some sort of insight that we lack

28:22

in our way of doing things. So

28:24

it's about learning, it's about engagement

28:26

in order to be , um,

28:29

students of other ways of thinking

28:31

and to learn from these other

28:33

traditions how to see and engage

28:35

the world in ways that will be different

28:37

from what we may have grown up with and different from

28:40

the standard practices that we have

28:42

from our own traditions. So

28:44

I'll mention , uh, just a couple things that I think

28:46

are useful here. One

28:48

is, I think African philosophies like Ubuntu

28:50

. Obviously Ubuntu is not one

28:52

philosophy, it's a, a collection

28:55

or a constellation of different

28:57

philosophies, but it is a much more

28:59

holistically oriented and less individualistic.

29:02

Whereas Decart said, I think therefore

29:04

I am the philosophers

29:07

arguing and working in the abub to tradition

29:09

says, you know, I am because we

29:11

are, And it comes much more out of a

29:13

communal kind of relationship to

29:16

a wider perspective on the world.

29:18

And I think that can help us, because

29:21

I think a lot of the work that is done in

29:23

a AI ethics and in

29:25

even the robots rights literature

29:27

tends to be very much focused on a Cartesian

29:30

subject that is sentient , that is conscious, and

29:32

that becomes the unit of analysis. If you

29:34

look at things from a more holistic, communal perspective,

29:37

we're looking at it then in a more relational approach

29:39

that I had described earlier. Another

29:42

tradition I think can be really useful

29:44

is by looking to indigenous

29:47

, uh, epistemologies and cosmologies.

29:49

And again, there is no one indigenous

29:52

epistemology. There are a plurality, a

29:54

multiplicity, because they're very different across

29:56

the world. But there are ways in which

29:59

our very idea of rights is

30:01

already a western concept, right? This idea

30:03

of God given rights to the individual. And

30:06

that's very Christian, it's very European, it's very

30:08

modern. And the

30:10

pre-modern sort of indigenous ways of thinking

30:12

about these things look at not rights.

30:14

They don't have that concept yet. They

30:16

talk about kinship relationships and

30:19

how do we build kin with our machines?

30:21

How do we exist alongside

30:24

these entities that are

30:27

our tools, our servants,

30:29

our instruments that doesn't turn

30:31

them into a slave, that doesn't turn them into

30:34

something that is beholden

30:36

to us. And I think kinship relationships as

30:39

developed in a lot of indigenous traditions can

30:41

be a nice way to sort of complicate

30:43

the rights literature that we often bring

30:46

to bear on these questions. And

30:48

then the third thing I will say, and this

30:50

comes outta Confucianism and some research that

30:52

some Confucian scholars have done recently. Instead

30:55

of talking about robot rights, r i

30:57

g H t, they talk about robot

31:00

rights, r i t e s,

31:02

that it's idea of a ritual of

31:04

a performance, and that the

31:06

robot is engaged with us alongside

31:09

us in performative activity. And

31:11

as a result, they are engaging us

31:13

in rights of social interaction

31:16

and that we should put the focus not on

31:19

rights as our I G H

31:21

T, but writes r i t

31:23

e s as a different way of sort

31:26

of shifting the focus from this

31:28

individual possession to a communal

31:30

performance.

31:31

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. Do you have any examples

31:33

of how that might look in practice? What

31:36

, what would that entail doing?

31:37

So this is what I've tried to develop, especially

31:39

with this relational turn , um, concept

31:42

that I, along with Mark Kleberg have

31:44

really been formulating and researching

31:47

for the last decade or more. This

31:49

idea is not ours alone. It comes out

31:51

of environmental ethics. It comes out of the sts

31:53

feminist , uh, ethics , uh, like Karen Barard

31:56

and Rosiere . Um

31:58

, but it's this idea that we need to begin

32:00

to think about our more relationships

32:03

as maybe taking precedence

32:05

over the individual moral , uh,

32:08

entity, and that we are all

32:10

born alongside others, and that

32:12

we are already in that relationship

32:15

prior to this extraction

32:18

of our sort of identity of ourselves.

32:21

Um , so it sort of works counter to the

32:23

Cartesian way of thinking about being in the world

32:25

where Decart is sort of isolated

32:28

from others and then has to go out to

32:30

others and figure out his , uh,

32:32

responsibilities to others. This way of thinking

32:35

is always already responsible

32:37

to others, and that the, the individual is

32:40

a product of that sort

32:42

of interaction. But , uh,

32:44

yeah, that's , uh, that's a life's work right there.

32:46

Sure, sure. Thanks. Do

32:49

you have any thoughts about what a human interaction

32:51

might look like in the future? We've talked a bit about

32:54

the , the legal context , um, but there's, there's,

32:56

there would be a lot of aspects of, of

32:58

interaction. And , um, I guess this

33:01

, you could answer this in the long term where,

33:04

as you say, when at some point in the future,

33:06

robots , um, become likely sentient

33:08

, uh, but there's also the short term answer.

33:10

I mean, we have human robot interaction now that's

33:12

not necessarily , um, related to robots

33:15

being sentient. So what, what, is

33:17

there anything that we can expect in the

33:19

future? How much can we, One thing I

33:21

wanna talk about as well is how much can we learn from science fiction? Um

33:24

, how much of that is lessons

33:26

about what we might see and how much of that is just

33:28

me a fantasy?

33:29

Yeah. No , this is a really important question because

33:31

I think sometimes we think that the robot invasion

33:33

is something from the future, right? We're

33:35

waiting for it. The robots are gonna rise up, or they're

33:37

gonna descend from the heavens with guns and,

33:40

you know , bombs and they're gonna attack us. And that's

33:42

, that's a science fiction scenario. I

33:44

think the robot invasion is way less

33:47

exciting, way less dramatic, even

33:50

moon mundane, it's like the fall of Rome.

33:52

We invite these things into our world, and

33:55

over a couple hundred years, we wonder where the robots

33:57

came from , um, because they have infiltrated

33:59

us in very slow movements

34:02

of, you know, our decisions to use

34:05

a device here to use of a device there.

34:08

So I think we need to look not necessarily

34:11

at the big picture, long

34:13

term kinds of questions, but I wanna look more

34:15

immediately, where are we at

34:17

right now? Like, what is happening

34:20

in our relationships to these devices

34:22

that is maybe of interest to us in

34:25

changing our social relationships

34:27

with each other in the process? So

34:30

one thing we've seen recently , um, as being

34:32

reason for both concern, but also of

34:34

interest is children saying, Thank you to

34:36

Alexa. Now, that's weird. We don't

34:38

say thank you to objects, right? We, we,

34:41

you know, don't say thank you to

34:43

our automobile for getting us around town. We

34:45

say thank you to persons . Some people do, Yeah , mostly

34:48

not. But you know, when we say

34:50

thank you to persons, right, and yet

34:52

the abilities of these very

34:55

simple digital assistance to

34:57

use language brings us into

34:59

a social relationship where

35:01

we think that we need to be polite to

35:04

the object. And there's nothing necessarily

35:06

wrong with that. There's reason

35:08

to think that that is part of what makes

35:11

us social creatures and

35:13

that we need to be really concerned

35:15

with not only , um, what

35:17

that artifact is, but how we

35:19

engage it, how we respond to

35:21

it. I think sometimes people try to write this

35:23

off as anthropomorphism. They say, you know,

35:25

this is the anthropomorphism, anthropomorphism

35:27

is a dirty word because we shouldn't

35:30

be doing that. Um, I think anthropomorphism

35:32

is not a bug. It's a feature . It's a feature of human

35:35

sociology. We do it to each other, other,

35:37

we do it to our animals, and we do

35:39

it to our objects. So it's not a matter of

35:41

yes, no, with anthropomorphism, it's

35:43

not a binary. It's a matter of

35:45

careful and informed

35:48

management. How do we want to manage

35:50

the anthropomorphism that

35:52

we are developing and designing in

35:54

the process of creating these things? And

35:57

I don't know that we have answers to those questions,

35:59

but I do know we have lots

36:01

of ways of engaging in this question.

36:04

Cause we not only have the example of talking to Alexa

36:06

and saying, thank you. We have robot abuse studies

36:08

in which people find it very , uh,

36:11

disconcerting and problematic to , um,

36:13

harm something that they're

36:15

told as just like a toaster. Nevertheless,

36:18

it's social interactivity makes it

36:20

very difficult to do these things. We

36:22

can already see in very

36:25

rudimentary robotic and AI

36:27

systems, ways in which we are accommodating

36:29

ourselves to these objects and

36:32

bringing them into our social relationships in

36:35

ways that maybe don't exactly

36:38

fit our human to human relationships, but

36:40

are creating new relationships. I'm

36:43

part of a new field in , uh, communication called

36:45

human machine communication. And that's

36:47

because we recognize the machines are no longer the

36:49

medium through which we send messages to each other.

36:51

They are the thing we talk to, they

36:54

are the thing we interact with. And this, I think, raises

36:56

some interesting , uh, immediate

36:59

questions that we don't have to wait until , uh,

37:01

you know, two, three decades from now when

37:03

we get sentis or agi or whatever the heck it

37:05

is .

37:06

Yeah, yeah. Um, we

37:08

, we talked about this a little bit with , uh, Thomas

37:10

Smith singer as well. It's, I guess, kind of a social

37:12

hallucination where we, we might just

37:14

all accept that, whether Alexa

37:17

or something else , um, we just

37:19

kind of accept and act like it's , uh, sentient

37:21

even if it's not. Um, one

37:24

, one thing I wanna maybe push back a little bit on

37:26

is , uh, I mean there are some examples,

37:28

I guess other examples of where people kind

37:30

of act like something is sentient

37:32

when it's not like children with

37:35

stuffed toys, for example. Or maybe

37:38

in like a very realistic video game where

37:41

you kind of, or you

37:43

are , maybe not intentionally, but you're sort of forgetting

37:46

maybe that it , it what you're interacting with

37:48

is an npc, like an

37:50

AI character, not , um,

37:52

not another , a real person. So I , I

37:55

have to ask, I guess , um, is that necessarily a

37:57

bad thing or is, I mean, you mentioned before

37:59

, uh, it

38:01

, it , the way we treat , um,

38:03

robots, even if they're not sentient, might actually be

38:05

important because it , it , uh, influences how

38:08

we affect how we interact with other humans

38:10

as well. So is that , is that a good thing, a

38:12

bad thing? Not , not quite a clear answer.

38:14

So I don't think it's a good or bad thing, but

38:17

it's a thing, It's a thing we have

38:19

to really take seriously. Um, we

38:21

talk about suspension of disbelief. When you go

38:23

to the theater or you watch a movie, the characters

38:25

on screen are not real. And yet we

38:28

feel for them, we engage with

38:30

their emotions, and we have an experience as

38:32

a result of that. Um, and, you

38:34

know, know in the early years of cinema, that

38:37

was something that people were worried about. Um,

38:39

would people, you know, lose themselves

38:42

in, in the story and, you

38:44

know, exit reality and spend

38:46

more time in the , in the movies than in

38:48

real world? Well, that didn't happen. We figured

38:50

it out. But that's why I say I think it's a management

38:52

problem. It's a way of managing

38:55

these relationships and managing these responses

38:57

that we make to these devices, because

38:59

that is where I think the real challenge

39:02

is . I think saying yes no

39:04

is way too simplistic. It's, you know,

39:06

we we're not going to fix this by saying, don't

39:08

do that. I don't think you fix

39:10

a social problem by saying to people, stop

39:13

doing something. Prohibition never

39:16

really fixes the problem. You've gotta figure

39:18

out how to engage them in

39:20

a reasonable and emotionally

39:22

informed response that we are

39:24

able to effectively manage and that works for

39:26

them.

39:27

Yeah. I actually find that a little bit amusing

39:29

how you mentioned people would think

39:31

that , um, cinema

39:34

is going to make people lose, lose

39:36

themselves in, in all these fictional

39:38

worlds. I guess , uh, the example I'm familiar

39:40

with most recently is , um, virtual reality and

39:43

I guess video games in general. People had

39:45

that worry , Uh, and I didn't realize there was

39:47

that worry about cinema. And then I also thought, well,

39:49

what, I mean, you could go back further and save

39:52

with this . It's not like , um, cinema was the

39:55

first , uh, iteration of fiction. There were plays

39:57

there, there were books. So

40:00

unless something is particularly different about

40:02

this new medium, maybe it's, you know , the newer

40:04

mediums are more engaging. It

40:06

is kind of interesting

40:08

and funny to think about for me. So one

40:12

example from science fiction that I wanted to

40:14

get your thoughts on is in science fiction , uh,

40:16

artificial entities are often seen as being quite discreet.

40:20

Uh , so for example, what often you have a

40:22

robot and that robot is sentient , and that's

40:25

in , like, their mind is encased in that

40:27

, in that physical robot. But in

40:29

reality, it might be a little bit more complex.

40:32

You might have you say

40:34

a single sense , uh, sentient entity , artificial

40:36

entity that controls

40:39

multiple different robots. Uh , and you

40:41

mentioned already that , uh, it's, it's a

40:43

mistake to think about artificial intelligence as being

40:45

disembodied because it is embodied somewhere. It

40:47

might just be more , um, diffuse more,

40:49

more spread out in say, different servers. So

40:53

for example, maybe for , um,

40:55

maybe for an AI

40:58

losing that controls multiple different robots,

41:00

losing an individual robot might be more like,

41:02

say, losing a limb than say, a human

41:04

dying. So in

41:06

, in cases like this where it's much

41:09

more diffuse and hard to tell really where an

41:11

AI begins and ends, or robot begins and ends,

41:13

how might this affect the case for robot

41:15

rights? Or how might this affect rubber rights in practice?

41:18

So I think here, corporate law provides

41:21

a pretty good template because

41:23

corporations are also diffuse, right? Corporations

41:26

are in such a way that there is no

41:28

one place you can go and say, that's the corporation,

41:30

right? It's all over the place and

41:33

it , it has different manifestations. And

41:35

I think if we really want

41:37

to learn from that experience,

41:40

I think we'll have a good template, at

41:42

least for beginning to address a lot of these questions.

41:44

Because I think the relationship

41:47

is much more direct between

41:49

AI and the, and the corporation because

41:51

both our artifacts, both are humanly

41:53

created and both have a

41:56

kind of status. Um, in

41:58

the case of the corporation, they have personhood. In

42:00

the case of ai, we're now arguing whether

42:02

AI should also have personhood. Um,

42:05

and again, I think oftentimes we're looking to the

42:07

animal question as the template

42:09

for how we decide a lot of questions

42:12

regarding the moral legal status of AI

42:14

and robots. But I think the corporation may be a

42:16

better , uh, analogy to follow.

42:19

Um , as we try to think our way through these things.

42:21

Are there things you think that we can learn from

42:23

science fiction that maybe some,

42:26

some depictions where the useful thought experiments

42:28

or where you might think, Oh, they've , they've

42:30

got it right, That looks like it's a plausible , um,

42:33

plausible scenario?

42:34

Yeah, I think there's a lot we can learn from

42:36

science fiction, and I appreciate the question because

42:38

I think sometimes , um, the

42:41

response to science fiction by roboticists

42:44

is this kind of, yes, but

42:46

no, you know , I'm interested in it,

42:48

but don't go there because science fact is way

42:50

more complicated and it's not as

42:53

simplistic as what you get in fiction. And we how

42:55

to bracket off that fictional stuff. So we can talk

42:57

about the real stuff. I think science

42:59

fiction does a lot of heavy lifting for us in

43:01

this field. It already gave us the

43:03

word robot. We wouldn't have the word robot

43:06

if it wasn't for science fiction to begin with. Secondly,

43:08

I don't think science fiction is about the future. Many

43:11

science fiction writers and filmmakers will tell

43:14

you this. Corey Daro is one of them . He

43:16

says, Science fiction is not about predicting the future, it's

43:18

about diagnosing the present. And

43:20

so what we see in science fiction are present

43:22

anxieties, present worries, present

43:25

concerns projected on the screen of

43:27

a possible future. And so we

43:29

can see science fiction as a way of self-diagnosing

43:32

our own worries and

43:34

concerns, almost like a psychoanalysis of

43:36

us as a species right

43:38

here, right now, and what really troubles

43:41

us. And so if we look at science fiction, not

43:43

as predictive, but as diagnostic, I

43:45

think we can learn a lot from our

43:47

science fiction. I also think science

43:49

fiction gets a lot of things

43:52

right way before we get into

43:54

those matters in the scientific

43:57

research. So for example, already in Blade

43:59

Runner, you have this analogy between

44:01

real animals and robotic animals. And

44:04

this whole notion of the electric sheep

44:07

that is the title from Phillip Cape

44:09

original novella, is this idea that

44:12

we are developing devices that

44:14

are indistinguishable from real entities,

44:17

and that we could have artificial animals

44:19

and we could have natural animals. And

44:21

so this idea, I think, helps us grapple

44:24

with the way in which we build these analogies to

44:26

other kinds of entities, the way we

44:29

analogize the robot by comparing it

44:31

to the animal and learning from

44:33

our relationship to animals, how we

44:35

relate to the robot or the ai.

44:37

I also think you see in science

44:40

fiction, a lot of deep

44:42

thinking about human robot interaction.

44:44

I mean, we already today are

44:46

talking about the , uh, effect and

44:49

possible social , uh, consequences of

44:51

sex robots. We've already grappled

44:54

with a lot of those questions in science fiction. Now,

44:57

maybe we haven't got the right answers, and maybe we

44:59

haven't , uh, developed even the right

45:01

inquiry, but we've already seen prototyped

45:03

for us the kinds of things that we should

45:06

be concerned with, the kinds of directions

45:08

that we should take our inquiries so that

45:10

when we do engage these questions in social

45:12

reality, we are prepared to do

45:15

so. Finally, I think science

45:17

fiction does a lot of good work making

45:19

public a lot of things about

45:21

robots and AI that average

45:24

people would not have access to. A

45:26

lot of the research is done in proprietary

45:28

labs behind closed doors, and

45:31

we only hear about it once it's released to the public.

45:33

And then there's either excitement or outrage

45:35

as the case may be , right? I

45:38

think a lot of people, if you ask them

45:40

what they know about robots, they inevitably

45:42

are gonna talk about Mr. Data . They're

45:44

gonna talk about Westworld, they're gonna talk about

45:46

Wally, they're gonna talk about R two D

45:48

two . They know the robots science fiction

45:51

way before they get into the

45:53

science fact . This is what it's called, science fiction prototyping.

45:56

And I don't think that science fiction prototyping

45:58

is necessarily something that is bad.

46:00

I think there's a lot of education that

46:02

takes place in popular media, and

46:04

if we are careful about how we create

46:07

our stories, if we're careful about how we

46:09

cultivate critical , uh, viewers

46:11

in our young people, I

46:14

think we can use this resource

46:16

as a really good way of popularizing

46:20

our thinking about these new challenges.

46:22

Yeah, I I really like what you said about , uh,

46:24

science fiction being almost like a , a thought experiment,

46:27

which that's one of the reasons why I love

46:29

sci science, reading science fiction, watching science fiction so

46:31

much. And I just wanna shout out as

46:33

well, one of my favorite science fictions, which depicts

46:36

, um, AI in a lot of different

46:38

forms is , um, Culture Ian Banks , uh,

46:41

series. Um, so I would

46:43

recommend , uh, people check that out. Uh

46:46

, one , one thing that's related this from

46:48

, uh, that we found from some research at Cent Institute,

46:50

we , um, uh, found

46:52

that , uh, people with a

46:55

science fiction , uh, fan identity

46:57

who , um, self-identified as being , um,

46:59

science fiction fans, that trait

47:01

was correlated with people perceiving

47:04

more mind in currently existing robots and AI

47:06

perceiving more mind in

47:08

robots that might exist in the future , Uh,

47:11

stronger beliefs that Ai , ai and robots

47:13

should have , uh, would have similar value

47:15

to human feelings, less moral exclusion

47:18

of robots in the eyes than I could go on. Um

47:20

, but it , it does seem like , uh, that

47:23

, um, science fiction fan identity or being

47:25

interested in science fiction has some positive effects,

47:28

I guess hard to say, whether that's , um,

47:30

whether that's causal or maybe that's, if

47:33

one , someone has one that likely to have the other.

47:35

But that gets me thinking

47:37

about , uh, what, what

47:39

kinds of things can we do to , uh,

47:42

actually, I guess , um, almost

47:44

like an intervention, if we were interested in moral circle

47:46

expansion in the AI robot context

47:48

, um, what can we do? I don't

47:50

, I don't mean like , uh, making people watch science

47:53

fiction or something, but , um, is there anything

47:55

that you think we could do to , uh,

47:58

encourage people to think about robots

48:00

and AI in a more positive light? Or should we,

48:02

and should we be doing anything?

48:03

Yeah, no, it's, it's , again, it's a really good

48:05

question and it's important because more

48:08

expansion is something that is part

48:11

of our evolution in

48:13

both moral philosophy and in law, right? I

48:16

mean, we , we've opened the circle to include previously

48:18

excluded individuals and groups, and

48:21

that's been a good thing. And so engaging

48:23

people in these kinds of , uh, exercises,

48:25

if you wanna call 'em, that I think is , uh, not

48:28

only instructive for them, but

48:30

it also contributes to our

48:33

evolution in our thinking on these

48:35

matters. I think, as

48:37

we just have discussed, I think science fiction is

48:39

one place that you can engage people in these questions.

48:41

I know when I work with my students, one

48:44

of the things that I find them to be

48:46

most engaged with and most

48:48

excited about is when

48:50

you can take something in their

48:52

popular media experience and

48:55

open it up in a way that allows for

48:57

them to really see a lot

48:59

of these things at play , um, and gives

49:02

them some access to it. Because

49:04

I think a lot of times these technological subjects

49:06

and these matters seem rather

49:09

inaccessible. And if you can make

49:12

'em accessible by fiction, by

49:14

whatever means, I think that's a , a really good

49:16

, um, opener to the

49:18

conversation. It doesn't mean you end

49:21

the conversation there, but that's where you begin to

49:23

cultivate this way of thinking. I

49:26

think another way to do this, and I

49:28

again, have found this to be a direct

49:30

, uh, instance in my own

49:32

classroom, is by giving people

49:35

access to devices, by

49:38

letting them just engage with robots.

49:40

You know, we have this idea of the robot petting

49:42

zoo that some people put together conferences and

49:45

stuff, but I think this is important. I

49:47

think kids are curious, especially

49:49

younger, younger kids, you know, high

49:51

school and and below, they

49:54

want to engage these things. They want to

49:56

take their curiosity and see, you

49:58

know , what happens. And

50:01

giving them access, I think is

50:03

crucial, because otherwise, it's

50:05

something that happens at Google. It's something that

50:07

happens at Microsoft, and therefore

50:09

it's not really a part of what they

50:12

are. It's not really in their world in

50:14

a way that they can make sense of it. And I

50:16

think access is absolutely necessary in

50:18

, in that area. I also think education

50:21

is very key to a lot of

50:23

this stuff. Again, I think we've

50:25

limited access to a lot of these materials

50:28

to specialists in computer science, artificial

50:30

intelligence, engineering, and elsewhere. We

50:32

, I think we've gotta open the curriculum and make

50:35

this stuff broadly available. Um, you can see already

50:38

with the release of Dolly and the

50:40

way people are using it to generate images, we

50:42

need artists to be engaged with this

50:44

technology, and we need artists to

50:46

help us make sense of what this creativity with

50:49

AI is all about. And if we don't

50:51

let artists into the conversation, we're

50:53

not going to learn what we can possibly

50:56

gather from the history of human

50:58

artistic expression and experience. The

51:01

same with music, the same with

51:03

journalism, the same with any field.

51:05

I think this technology is

51:08

no longer able to be limited to

51:10

one specific field, and we've gotta teach

51:13

it across the curriculum in a way that begins

51:15

early and that gets the curiosity

51:18

of our young learners engaged

51:20

from the very early stages of

51:22

their career.

51:23

Great. Thanks for that. Uh , so just

51:25

a couple of questions to sort of wrap this

51:27

all up. Um , I've noticed that you, you

51:29

had an interest in programming from

51:32

a young age, and you've actually developed internet

51:34

applications. You, you , um, uh,

51:37

a an established developer, but

51:39

instead of pursuing computer science , uh, more generally,

51:41

you followed a career in the philosophy of technology.

51:44

Um, why do you think that is? What interests you about, about

51:46

the philosophy of technology more so than coding

51:48

itself?

51:49

Yeah, this is interesting because I , I

51:51

used web development as

51:53

the means to pay for the bad habit of going to

51:55

grad school, <laugh> . But

51:58

it's funny because those two things tracked

52:00

really nicely because one was very

52:02

hands on , very practical, and

52:05

the other was very heady, very theoretical, and

52:07

so they sort of balanced each other out. Uh

52:10

, but one , one thing I noticed as I was

52:12

doing these things simultaneously is

52:15

that the one could really speak to the other, if

52:17

somebody would build the bridge, that

52:19

what we were doing in programming

52:22

and in developing applications could

52:24

actually gain from the traditions

52:26

of human learning, from a epistemology,

52:28

from metaphysics, from ethics, you name

52:30

it. If we would only build the bridge

52:32

to those philosophical traditions, we'd be able to open

52:35

that conversation. And I think we've been rather successful with

52:37

that. If you see how AI ethics has really

52:39

exploded in the last five years,

52:42

but it also goes the other direction. I

52:44

think the computer and digital

52:46

media and ai and robots can

52:49

actually provide philosophy with

52:51

some really interesting thought experiments

52:53

on the one hand, but also some interesting challenges,

52:56

the human exceptionalism and the way we think

52:58

about ourselves as being the center of the universe, and

53:01

therefore the only sentient creature to,

53:03

you know, exist on planet earth, which obviously

53:05

isn't true. So what I

53:07

saw as this ability to use the

53:09

one to inform the other, and the reason

53:11

I went in one direction as opposed

53:13

to the other direction, it just had to do

53:15

that. It turned out I'm a better teacher than

53:17

I am programmer <laugh> . And so

53:20

I pursued the one that was gonna take me in

53:22

that direction.

53:23

Yeah. Do you , do you think , uh,

53:25

your work , um, in

53:27

developing has given you some credibility? Because

53:30

I imagine there , there

53:32

might be some , uh, people in the

53:34

philosophy of technology who maybe

53:37

aren't taken so seriously by people who

53:39

actually work on artificial intelligence, machine learning,

53:41

what have you. Uh , and

53:44

I , I can think of , um, some,

53:46

there are some people who don't, like , for example, don't

53:48

take , um, AI safety very seriously,

53:50

who work in , uh, who work

53:52

in actual the actual development of ai. They might think

53:55

these people, you know, they have these ideas,

53:57

but they don't really know anything about technology. They're kind of naive

54:00

is , is what they might say. So do you think because

54:02

you've kind of , um, you've , you've

54:05

done both, do you think that gives you some credibility in,

54:07

in that , uh, the tech space?

54:09

I hope it does. What , what I will say

54:11

is that it feels very

54:13

dishonest to me to

54:15

talk about machine learning or

54:17

any other technology and not know how

54:20

it works. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , I'll

54:23

just give you some examples from my own sort of trajectory.

54:25

So I wrote a book on remix in

54:28

the, you know, 2016,

54:31

I think it came out. And it

54:33

took me a while to write the book, not because

54:35

I couldn't write it, but because I wanted to learn

54:38

to be a DJ before I wrote the book. And

54:40

I spent all this time developing the practice because

54:43

I didn't think I had the credibility to

54:45

speak about this artistic practice

54:47

and the technology behind it without

54:49

knowing the how it works, knowing the tools

54:51

and having hands on experience with it. The

54:54

same, when I started to engage with

54:56

AI and robotics, I knew that

54:59

there was no way I could speak with any

55:01

credibility about machine

55:03

learning, about big data, about neural

55:05

networks and all these things. If I hadn't

55:07

built one, if I hadn't done the

55:10

task at hand in actually

55:13

constructing a neural network, training it on

55:15

data and see what it does. And I

55:17

think for my own writing, this is what

55:19

allows me to speak with some conviction,

55:22

with some real good

55:24

grounding in the technology. And

55:27

that hopefully is communicated

55:30

in the resulting text to the rest of

55:32

the world that I'm not just

55:34

making this up. I, I come to this from

55:36

the perspective of really knowing what goes on

55:38

behind the scenes and have brought my

55:40

philosophical knowledge to bear on something I

55:43

have direct hands-on experience with.

55:45

See it . So I I, I've got a similar experience

55:48

in that I tried to , um, I , I actually did

55:50

a PhD in space science , uh,

55:52

and , um, I have a

55:54

geo geoscience background and I wanted to , uh,

55:56

work a little bit on say, some long-termism

55:59

, uh, like ethical

56:02

questions and apply that as, as it applies

56:04

to space science. Uh , and I thought

56:06

that doing that might , could be more credibility

56:08

when I talk about these ethical problems. Um,

56:11

but I , in my experience, something

56:13

that's too soon to say perhaps, but it doesn't feel

56:15

like it. Uh , I think there's

56:18

just , I've been met with a lot of skepticism from the space

56:20

science community on some of those ethical ideas.

56:23

Um, but it , it sounds like that's worked out better for you, so

56:26

that's that's good to hear.

56:27

It . It doesn't mean that you don't get pushback . It

56:29

doesn't mean that you don't get criticism. Yeah , yeah . Um

56:31

, I think, you know, it , it's

56:33

always a push pull . You're always kind of putting

56:36

yourself out there and then trying to justify what it

56:38

is you're doing to others who may be skeptical of

56:40

it. Um, especially when your

56:42

ideas might be less than popular, which

56:45

often is the case in , in academia. But

56:48

I think the dialogue is crucial.

56:50

And I think meeting people where

56:52

they're at is part

56:54

of building that transaction , um,

56:57

and making it work. Uh , I did have a

56:59

guy at one point on Twitter say to me , Um,

57:01

you should shut up because you don't work

57:03

in this field and you don't know what you're talking about. And

57:05

so I sent him the , uh,

57:08

neural network that I built. I

57:10

just sent him the code, and I just said, Here,

57:14

<laugh> , that that must

57:16

be satisfying in a , in a kind of <laugh> , vindictive

57:18

Way. It was very satisfying.

57:21

Can imagine. Um, well

57:23

, yeah, just , uh, to , to kind of bring this

57:25

together. Do you , um, over your career

57:28

so far, do you think you've noticed any shifts

57:31

in thinking , um, about how we think

57:33

about robot rights? Um, one, one just

57:35

to , to kind of prime you is , um, maybe

57:37

a shift in people thinking about robots

57:40

, um, as moral agents

57:42

to shifting to thinking about them more as moral

57:44

patients. Do you, what have you seen

57:46

over your career so far?

57:48

So I , yeah, I , as I said, I think earlier is

57:50

, you know, when this started for me it

57:52

was a really small, you know, I , I

57:54

could really hold on, you know, my

57:56

fingers, how many people were working on this subject, right?

57:58

And that was it. And it's really exploded.

58:00

I think the work that you've done at Sun Institute documenting

58:03

this in your review of literatures that

58:05

you've done , uh, really shows this exponential

58:08

increase in interest, but also

58:10

, uh, scholarship in this field. And

58:13

that, on the one hand is very gratifying. On

58:15

the other hand, it's hard to keep up <laugh> cause there's

58:17

so much happening and there's a lot to read and

58:19

a lot to stay on top of. Um,

58:22

but I will say that a couple of trends

58:24

have emerged , uh, in this process. I

58:27

think there has been an increasing move

58:30

from this being a speculative

58:32

moral subject to this being a

58:34

much more pr pragmatic and

58:36

practical legal subject. My

58:38

own thinking has evolved in that way. My first book,

58:41

the Machine Question was very philosophical,

58:43

very morally situated

58:45

in those traditions. My most recent

58:47

book, which is gonna be this thing called Person thing robot

58:50

from MIT press , come on next year

58:52

, um, is much more engaged

58:54

with the legal philosophy and

58:56

with legal practice. And that

58:58

just, I think, is a reflection

59:00

of the fact that that's how the trend is

59:02

gone in the research over the

59:05

last decade. Another thing

59:07

I've noticed is a

59:09

development in the,

59:12

bringing into the conversation these

59:15

non-western ways of thinking about these questions.

59:17

I think when these questions began over

59:20

a decade ago, the way

59:22

in which I and others were very much

59:24

engaging these things were by leveraging

59:26

sort of the western moral and legal traditions

59:29

to try to speak to the people

59:31

who are building these things and developing these technologies.

59:34

Over this past decade, we've

59:37

seen, I think, a greater engagement

59:39

with, in a greater desire to

59:42

engage with other ways of thinking

59:44

and other ways of seeing not

59:46

as a way of , uh, doing something better

59:48

or worse or whatever the case is , but it's just

59:50

tapping into that difference

59:53

that we can see in human thought

59:55

processes that allow for us to really

59:57

cultivate a relationship to

1:00:00

the wide range of human wisdom as

1:00:02

it's developed over time, but also over space.

1:00:05

And I would say the last

1:00:07

thing I've seen, and this is very gratifying, I

1:00:09

think when I started this and

1:00:12

began to talk about robot

1:00:14

rights as a subject matter for

1:00:16

investigation , uh, there

1:00:18

was I think a lot of very

1:00:21

abrasive and very , uh,

1:00:23

sort of triggered reactions. How can you say

1:00:25

that this is, this is just horrendous. I

1:00:27

mean, who would talk this way? Um,

1:00:29

and I had this very famous picture I put

1:00:32

on Twitter with me holding a sign that said, Ro

1:00:34

robot writes now say

1:00:36

that . Yeah . And it really sparked an amazing,

1:00:39

huge controversy , um,

1:00:41

about a decade ago , well, about

1:00:43

five years ago. And I

1:00:46

learned a lot in that little exchange that

1:00:48

took place, but it was an explosion of in , of

1:00:50

interest, but also of , of pushback . I

1:00:53

think we've seen it evolve to the point now where people

1:00:55

are saying, Yeah, we need to talk

1:00:57

. This has gotta be talked about. This has gotta be grappled

1:00:59

with, We can't just put

1:01:01

, put our fingers in our ears and go, blah, blah, blah,

1:01:03

blah, blah . This doesn't exist. It does exist. Laws

1:01:07

are being made, hearings are

1:01:09

happening. AI personhood is

1:01:11

not something for the future. It's something

1:01:13

that legislatures are looking at right now. And

1:01:16

as a result of all this, taking these questions

1:01:18

seriously , um, and engaging

1:01:20

with them in a way that is informed by

1:01:23

good moral and legal thinking processes,

1:01:25

I think is absolutely crucial. And I've seen in

1:01:28

the last five years that mature in

1:01:30

a way that I think really , uh, speaks

1:01:32

to the fact that a lot of people have

1:01:34

found this to be not only of interest, but

1:01:37

also something that is crucial for our

1:01:39

engagement with as researchers.

1:01:42

Hmm , <affirmative> . Great. Well thanks. Thanks for that , David. Um

1:01:45

, just to finish up, where can listeners

1:01:47

, uh, best follow you in your work? And is there anything

1:01:49

in particular you'd wanna suggest they look at, whether

1:01:51

it's a book or any, any other , um, piece of

1:01:53

work you've worked on? If they're , especially if

1:01:55

they're interested in this topic and want to wanna learn more.

1:01:57

So you can follow me on Twitter. It's , uh,

1:01:59

David Underlined Gun. Uh , that's

1:02:01

my handle. Um , you can find it very

1:02:04

easily. My website is gun web.com

1:02:06

and you can go there for access

1:02:09

to texts and books and things

1:02:11

like that. I would say right

1:02:13

now, if this is of interest

1:02:15

to you and you really want to jump in

1:02:18

feet first and sort of see what it's all about , uh,

1:02:20

the two books that began all this was the

1:02:22

Machine Question, Critical Perspectives

1:02:25

on ai, Robots and Ethics from 2012.

1:02:28

And Robot Writes from 2018,

1:02:30

both published by MIT Press, and

1:02:32

, uh, you should be able to get both of 'em used for very cheap

1:02:35

these days. Um, or

1:02:37

go to the library, they have 'em too. Uh

1:02:39

, but that's a pretty good way to get,

1:02:41

I think, into this material.

1:02:44

Um , and because of the kind of research I

1:02:46

do, I try to be

1:02:48

as exhaustive as possible and documenting

1:02:51

what people have said, where it's

1:02:53

going, where it's come from, and hopefully make

1:02:55

sense of it. So it hopefully will

1:02:57

provide people with a good guide to

1:03:00

, uh, finding their way through this stuff

1:03:02

and figuring out where they stand.

1:03:03

That's great. Thanks. We'll have , uh, links to

1:03:05

all of that in the show notes and everything else that we've

1:03:08

referred to in the, in the show. So thank

1:03:10

you again, David, Really appreciate your time and thanks for joining us.

1:03:12

Yeah, it's been really great to talk to you and , uh, I

1:03:14

appreciate the questions. Uh, as

1:03:17

, as you said early on, there's a sort of reason

1:03:19

that the Sentence Institute is

1:03:21

interested in these questions and there's a reason I'm interested

1:03:23

in these questions and I think they dovetail very

1:03:26

nicely. And it was great, you know, to talk with

1:03:28

you about these matters.

1:03:30

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

1:03:33

You can subscribe to The Sentence Institute

1:03:35

podcast on iTunes, Stitcher,

1:03:37

or any podcast app.