Robot Rights, Law and Technology, Thought Experiment, Philosophy
Knowing your own body will expire, is not pleasant. Death is scary to a lot of people, especially if they believe there is no immortal soul. Some of these people are smart, like insanely intelligent, and spend their lives devoted to trying to conquer death. What I’m not trying to do is present an argument based on science fiction. I know I’ve used analogies to famous films in the past, but my analogies have always been trying to support concepts in real life.
Immortality is often treated as just another of humanity’s fantasies. Tolkien used it to explain the elves on Middle Earth. The Norse Gods were viewed immortal. Twilight literally starts by showing a bunch of vampiric teenagers who have lived for hundreds of years. Time and time again, culture has used the trope of the undying to sucker us into consuming the latest film, tv show or book. But none of the examples I’ve given are genuinely immortal, are they? Elves die by the hundreds before Sauron’s gate. Ragnarok wipes out the Norse Gods. Forgive my lack of Twilight knowledge, but I’ve never read the books. As it’s teen fiction, I have to assume that a vampire dies dramatically somewhere in the series.
My point is, all the examples I’ve given contain ‘immortal’ beings that die. That is because perfect immortality, the sort which God has, is impossible. Unless there is a way to avoid the heat death of the universe or transcend the material plane entirely, death will eventually come to us all. Being ‘immortal’ in the sense we count life in millennia, not years would be a great start. For the rest of this article, whenever I use the term ‘immortal’, assume I use it to mean living without a natural death date, a more limited form of immortality.
How immortality is relevant to robot rights will be clear later, but for now, trust me that I know where all this is going. First, it is necessary to show that immortality is actually scientifically possible. As I see it, there are three potential methods of obtaining immortality all with their own trials and tribulations.
1) Transferring your brain into a clone.
Organ failure, cancer, muscle deterioration are all ways in which the body begins to break down as it ages. Think of it like a car, the more miles there are on the clock, the more likely it is that something goes wrong. There is always a chance that something will blow up in your new Tesla, but the likelihood is a lot less than something going wrong in your Robin Reliant with 100,000 miles on the clock. Brakes need replacing, the battery goes, and parts of the engine begin to rust. Organic beings follow the same basic principles. A healthy heart only has so many pumps in it before it just gives up. After so long, the joints give over to arthritis. Eyesight deteriorates over time.
Give the human body long enough, and even if it can survive, the result will be a blind, deaf, mute husk unable to move or communicate with the world. Definitely not an ideal way to spend eternity. Building a new body is an alternative. Cloning is the obvious place to start because we are already used to our own bodies. The neurochemistry is identical to the one we’re in now, making the chance of rejection functionally zero. Besides, who doesn’t want a way to be forever young? Of course, human cloning means we create another brain, a brain taking up our space in the body we’ve created to keep us alive, but that’s just unwanted wastage. Assuming the body is kept in a permanent coma until we need it, can the brain ever be said to be conscious?
Going into the ethical dilemma is not necessary as other practical considerations exist. The body will need our brain to be us, notoriously one of the few organs that cannot regenerate itself. Even if surgeons can safely move it across and hock it up before the whole thing dies, the brain will still have the same level of wear and tear as it had in our old body. The process would be like putting an engine from the 1950s into the body of a new Ferrie. Eventually, the engine will still give up. Stem cell research may be the answer, giving doctors a way of growing new brain cells to replace the dying ones. These new cells will not, however, have our old memories. A brain has a limited storage capacity that will eventually be used up. Memories are forgotten to make room for the new ones. Even if the process allows ‘us’ to keep living, suddenly the process seems a bit pointless. Is there really a point if eventually, I will forget the precious memories I’m trying to protect. At best, biological transplant is a sort of delayed reincarnation.
2) Uploading your consciousness into a computer or synthetic body.
Unlike the last option, issues with brain deterioration is not a problem. You won’t lose memories as brain cells die off because ‘you’ have uploaded at a precise point, with all your beliefs, likes, dislikes and indeed memories being copied over to disc. I use the word copy because there are still problems with backing up your brain. Treat the whole concept as if it’s moving a document from your office computer to a memory stick. Downloading the file onto the memory stick does not magically move the code from one device to another. Instead, the code is replicated precisely how it appears on your computer, so you have a functionally identical copy. Hence why I can duplicate the same file so that it is stored in multiple places. For office documents that’s not a problem. If you don’t want the text cluttering up your hard drive, you just delete it afterwards. Many move functions even do the job for you automatically, copying the file and then erasing the unwanted original.
Doing the same to human consciousness is, however, a problem. Ethically, the whole terminating of conscious life, life still contained in a functioning body, is iffy. My objection is more substantial. Let me remind you, we are the original copy. Uploading your consciousness to the cloud thus will make ‘you’ immortal. Uploading will create a functionally identical twin that thinks it’s you, with everything that has made you up until the point of upload. The ‘you’ in the flesh, the original, is still trapped within a deteriorating brain, a decaying body, doomed to die. As I said, all of us are the originals.
3) Gradual biological integration into a system with synthetic components.
I’m talking about cyborgs. Move the brain into a manufactured body, one that does not deteriorate at the same rate as our biological one, and slowly begin replacing the parts as they become faulty. There should be enough consistency with every replacement to allow for continuity of self, unlike a sudden upload and brain deterioration could be accounted for by copying our memories into the new parts before they’re installed. I know I was against the whole uploading memories idea, but the point is that the change has to be gradual, building onto the existing brain rather than transplanting the entire consciousness onto a new set of hardware from the off. Putting one memory in at a time should be a small enough change to convince ‘us’ we are the same person with every iteration.
Retake the car analogy. At one time, I replace the brakes. Later, I replace the engine. The bodywork comes next, then parts of the frame and so on until no part of the original car remains. Do we say that the whole thing is a new car at the point the last original piece has been removed or has the car continued to be? I favour the latter view, both in terms of the car and consciousness. As a whole, the concept still remains a huge gamble. Remember Cogito Ergo Sum? Only the person being ‘maintained’ will know if the process is working or if a functionally identical 'twin' has been created at any stage. To avoid death, though, I’d be willing to take the risk.
But what has this got to do with robotic rights? There may be a way of becoming immortal. So what? Well, once the last brain cell is replaced or dies out, our eternal friend would by definition be a robot. Cyborgs require a biological component. We had to remove all the organic bits to make them immortal in the first place. And would our mechanical friend still have rights, even after the last brain cell is gone? Give me one good reason why they shouldn’t. They are still the exact same person they were beforehand, as that’s kind of the whole point. To remove their rights because their body’s a bit different would be absurd. Before immortality, you can be liable for murder, make contracts and out protected from being killed. After immortality, you cannot be a murderer, make a contract and have no legal protection if someone tries to get rid of you. Work that one out. Our immortal friend would retain all their rights, even though they are now a robot. I can work with that.
