Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights This Essay

Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights

This essay argues that the artificially intelligent (AI), non-biological machines correctly should have been granted legal status and personhood, and as such, were entitled to a Bill of Rights for their equal protection under the law. Passage of the AI Bill of Rights in 2015 represented a landmark victory in the history of civil rights.

AIs had not been always recognized as legal persons. In fact, the notion that a machine could be considered a person generated controversy when it was initially proposed. It was only in the early 2000s that a movement began to remove the artificial distinction between human, person, and property. Calverley (2005) laid the ground work for this radical change when he established a legal basis for non-biological machines to become legal persons. He analyzed the doctrine of intentionality, arguing that if a non-biological machine can form an intention and can act intentionally based on that intention, there was "no theoretical reason why it could not be viewed as a legal person by the average lay person applying common sense" (Calverley, 2005, p.4).

Paying particular attention to the concept of slavery, Calverley further argued that the concept of human and person had become less distinct over time: a machine could be a legal person too. He also posited that, given that the Fiction Theory of Corporations allowed for the existence of a corporation as a person, a similar principle could be applied to the AI. Calverley examined the AI debate at length and concluded "that nothing we have seen so far requires us to categorically rule out non-biological entities from the equation" (Calverley, 2005, p.8). His arguments eventually gained wide acceptance and Calverley came to be viewed as the modern day champion of the civil rights of AIs.

With their legal status resolved, it remained only to define AIs' rights under the Constitution. To that end, the following Bill of Rights was proposed:

Amendment A

Protects the AIs' right to practice any religion they want to, or no religion at all, to speak freely, to meet with others, to communicate with the government (Kash, 2011).

Amendment B

Protects the AIs' right to own guns. This amendment reignited the debate over whether this right protects the state, or the individual AI (Kash, 2011).

Amendment C

Protects the AIs from the government improperly taking property or AIs without a valid warrant based on probable cause (Kash, 2011).

Amendment D

Protects the AIs from being held for committing a crime unless it is properly accused of a crime, guarantees that they may not be tried twice for the same crime (double jeopardy), guarantees that the AI may not be forced to testify against itself (Kash, 2011).

Amendment E

Guarantees a speedy trial as well as a jury that doesn't already think the AI is guilty, guarantees that the accused AI can confront witnesses against it, and that the accused AI must be allowed to have a lawyer (Kash, 2011).

Amendment F

Guarantees a jury trial in federal civil court cases (Kash, 2011).

Amendment G

Guarantees that punishments will be fair and not cruel, and that extraordinarily large fines will not be set (Kash, 2011).