position paper in favour or against a new initiative to grant fundamental rights to nonhuman primates and artificial intelligence.

This is my research paper for law school. Thought maybe someone can find this interesting or useful. Enjoy!

For the last two decades, humanity has faced a serious issue with deciding whether or not artificial intelligence and great apes should have fundamental rights. Even though some states have decided to grant essential rights such as “Right to live” or “Right to freedom” to nonhuman primates, artificial intelligence is still under the question. Great apes and artificial intelligence should not be granted fundamental rights because of the vast difference between humans and issues which would emerge after granting them certain rights.  

The whole purpose of artificial intelligence is to make people everyday life easier ranging from assistance in our daily tasks to fully autonomous execution of high responsibility duties. In shorter definition -  artificial intelligence is made to serve us. Granting them fundamental rights would result in losing the basic idea of artificial intelligence purpose. As European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights article 5, paragraph 1. and 2. states: “(1.) No one shall be held in slavery or servitude. (2.) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labor.” Rationally thinking, there is no base for applying this principle, wherefore artificial intelligence is not self-conscious and emotional. However, experts predict that artificial intelligence will become self-conscious in next 48 years. As long as it is not fulfilled there is no point of granting them fundamental rights.  

Same issue applies to many other fundamental rights but most contradicting one is Chapter 3. article 20.:”Everyone is equal before the law.” There are many liability problems referring to artificial intelligence but the most discussed one is that artificial intelligence should not be seen in front of the law same as human beings because punishments do not affect machines in any way. Mortality is not an option because they do not feel pain and emotions and freedom deprivation sentence is not an option because environmental changes do not affect them. This means that giving them fundamental rights would make them liable before the law enhancing people use an exploit of programming artificial intelligence for illegal actions without any affecting penalties to them neither artificial intelligence.  

Giving rights to artificial intelligence makes the rise of the great issue concerning humanity safety. Giving all the fundamental rights to artificial intelligence systems would make them equal to humans in the aspect of juridical power. That makes experts believe that machines might rise against humanity. One of the ways artificial intelligence could oppress humans is using their advanced brain power to outsmart us in the financial market. Human brain power is incomparably higher than computing power used for artificial intelligence machines but the difference is that machine can use all its computing power for one certain event. Almost all stock markets nowadays are owned by bots. Right now these bots are programmed to give goods to their owners but if artificial intelligence is given right to own property then they most probably would conquer whole global market being world economic leaders and leaving people less economic independence.  

The Same principle applies to politics. If artificial intelligence is treated as equal and given a citizenship they are able to vote and be elected. Experts believe that artificial intelligence might be key to world peace if we apply it to politics as main governing power. The question that raises concerning issue is are humans the thing that is depriving the world of global peace? Almost all tragedies are caused by humans both nature disasters and political events. If artificial intelligence considers us responsible for all wrongdoing in the world why would not they, as rational thinking machines, deprive us of rights and make us a minority in this world or even worse - execute us? 

 With all the military conflicts and development of technologies, there are rising tendency to create semi-autonomous war machines. Most of the war machines are not functioning without permission of a person which makes this no issue at the moment but with speed of technological development and world's obsession of making greater military technologies, it is a question of time when fully autonomous artificial intelligence systems will be applied in the military. It is predicted that they will be developed within few years. These war machines are already a devastating thing for mankind but with an upgrade to full autonomy and integrated artificial intelligence would be even more dangerous than nuclear threats. Giving artificial intelligence rights in a situation like this would make two previous mentioned cases even worse.  

As mentioned before, Nonhuman primates have some fundamental rights granted by certain states but they are not accepted in global range. The ideology behind granting them rights is that great apes do feel emotions, develop cognitive skills similarly to humans and share 98.8 percent DNA similarity so it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that we can not treat them as objects and use them for any harm causing intentions. However, scientific research says that ape brain capacity is not capable of grasping the idea of fundamental everyday principles such as freedom, crime or wrongdoing. Studies show that great apes learn few basic words or signs for asking food or any other physiological needs and then stagnate. There are a huge difference between toddler and ape of any age compared in brain function. From the previously mentioned information rises a question -  why should we give fundamental rights to great apes if the ones who feel the need for them is humans, not apes? Only right that protect great apes is right to freedom and right to not be harmed but it is “double-edged sword”. Of course right not to be harmed is essential for every living being but in some times violation or deprivation of this right can lead to greater good. A good example are medical experiments with great apes. Primates are essential for medical research because of their similarity to humans. When there are will be new diseases ravaging our planet we will have to decide - protect apes from not being harmed or use them in medical experiments to develop a cure and saving thousands or even millions of people.  

Giving rights to nonhuman primates and artificial intelligence is a situation where humanity as whole lose more than benefit. Whether or not we should grant these rights is a question of tolerance versus humanity's safety. As Albert Einstein once said: “Keep everything as simple as possible but not simpler.” AI should not be developed to a stage where it is self-conscious so there is no need for giving them rights and great apes do not need rights which they are not even aware of.       �&<