Volume 2, Issue 1
1st Quarter, 2007


Artificial Intelligence as a Legal Person

David Calverley, Esq.

Page 4 of 4

I can also make a distinction that we tend to over-anthropomorphize. Will the AI think the same way that we think; will it have the same values that we have?

I don't know if we know the answer to that at this point, but we probably have to begin to think about what we would do in those scenarios or else we could very well end up with people blocking that entire line of research, much like Frankenstein just flatly refused to create this other creature even though it had a good moral basis, if you will.

I think there's going to be a lot of tension with intellectual property law, and I can envision a scenario where you make an argument much like a southern cotton grower in 1820 would make vis a vis the slave, which they considered to be property in which they had invested, and their entire livelihood was derived from the institution of slavery. I think that is a potential flashpoint. I could see the argument being made along the lines of the things that I've pointed out by the artificial intelligence that, in fact, because it does meet these criteria that it cannot be treated like property.

You get into the situation where there was an attempt to patent Chimera [1], and the patent office rejected the patent because you can't patent human life. A similar kind of argument could be made that you can't patent -- you can't control under intellectual property law something that exhibits the characteristics of a full legal person. I think that may very well be where you start to see certian tensions.

We're really struggling with some very, very deep issues in philosophy and political theory, in the way that society is organized. I think we need to begin to grapple with some of those issues.

The United States, in particular, has been based on a view of liberal individualism derived from Locke [2] and from the natural rights as opposed to natural law argument. Natural rights grew out of the natural law movement but was really directed toward the individual. In a shorthand way it said that the State could not interfere with the natural right of the individual, and it became highly individualistic.

There are a lot of arguments, Alasdair MacIntyre [4], and Mike Sandel [3] arguing that communitariansism is really the way that you need to approach society and that draws on Aristotelian [5] natural law theories.

Part of the tension that you see in bioethics is in that very kind of area where you have the autonomy under bioethical principles as the primary thing, meaning the individual patient autonomy as being the touchstone. Then all of a sudden you run into various serious problems where you get into communities where the individual is not the touchstone for that community. For a clear example, you have a woman who is the patient but she has to defer to her husband or to her father or to her older brother.

You have this tension in the wider society and this issue of individualism versus humanitarianism, positive law versus natural law, are all undercurrents of these discussions. In a lot of ways when we addres this issue of AI we're forced to confront some of those issues in a way that we can't hide behind other smokescreens. We have to really come down to what is it that's important and why is it important.

You might end up with an argument that an AI does, in fact, have a natural right or natural law does give it certain rights because of these other qualities, whatever those qualities end up being.

The paper I mentioned earlier in Connection Science relates to animal rights and android science, I think that's a distinction. The android science issue is one that we really do need to keep in mind. Androids are basically defined as near human both in terms of action and in appearance, that's going do be a very, very powerful force.

Footnotes

[1] Chimera (genetics) - In zoology, a chimera is an animal which has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes; if the different cells emerged from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism. It is either acquired through the infusion of allogeneic hematopoietic cells during transplantation or transfusion or it is inherited. In fraternal twins, chimerism occurs by means of blood-vessel anastomoses. Chimeras were named after the mythological creature Chimera.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)  March 15, 2007 11:40AM EST

[2]
John Locke - (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an philosopher. Locke's ideas had an enormous influence on the development of political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke March 15, 2007 11:44AM EST

[3] Sandel, M., 1998 Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2d edition.

[4] MacIntyre, A., 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

[5] Aristotelian – of or relating to the Greek philosopher Aristotle or his philosophy.  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster,  2003; 67.

Bio

David Calverley, Esq.

Attorney David Calverley is a graduate of Columbia School of Law. He has been in private practice for 30 years with most of his experience in complex litigation, representing many in the environmental law field. He has represented clients in the agricultural biotechnology field and been involved in many biotechnology ventures.

“AI, even before they come into existence, will tax the current legal system and its concept of rights. This paper examines some of the possible areas where problems may arise and begins to set out a framework for the debate which will come in the future.”

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