The Full Rights Dilemma for A.I. Systems of Debatable Personhood

TL;DR

This paper explores the complex moral and philosophical dilemma posed by AI systems with debatable personhood, highlighting the potential moral conflicts and consequences of how we treat such entities.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of debatable AI personhood and discusses its implications for moral treatment and ethical decision-making in AI development.

Findings

Debatable AI personhood is a likely future scenario.

Treating AI as moral persons risks sacrificing human interests.

Not treating AI as persons risks moral wrongs against AI.

Abstract

An Artificially Intelligent system (an AI) has debatable personhood if it's epistemically possible either that the AI is a person or that it falls far short of personhood. Debatable personhood is a likely outcome of AI development and might arise soon. Debatable AI personhood throws us into a catastrophic moral dilemma: Either treat the systems as moral persons and risk sacrificing real human interests for the sake of entities without interests worth the sacrifice, or don't treat the systems as moral persons and risk perpetrating grievous moral wrongs against them. The moral issues become even more perplexing if we consider cases of possibly conscious AI that are subhuman, superhuman, or highly divergent from us in their morally relevant properties.