Spurs disinformation crisis
Birhane et al. ’21 [Abeba Birhane, PhD Candidate, Complex Software Lab, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Jelle van Dijk and Frank Pasquale, “Debunking Robot Rights Metaphysically, Ethically, and Legally,” WeRobot Conference paper, 8—21, p. 19]
More troubling outcomes are likely if advocates for humanoid robots claim human rights for them or program them to imitate a desire for such rights. Consider, for instance, the right to communicate online. Lawyer John Frank Weaver [74] has argued that “all the constitutional speech protections that humans enjoy in the United States” should “apply to A.I., robots, and Twitterbots, whether they are Russian intruders or Microsoft mistakes.” The proliferation of bots has already overwhelmed and drowned out actual human speech in several contexts, spamming hashtags and otherwise impeding communication and collective will formation. The larger purposes of free expression are to enable human autonomy, and to allow humans to democratically self-govern. These purposes are not served by expansions of free expression rights to bots (often built by already-powerful entities) that would permit them to dominate communicative spheres.