Checks that prevent AI risk are gutted when we give rights

Building on theories of phenomenology, post-Cartesian approaches to cognitive science, and critical studies, we ground our position in the lived reality of actual humans in an increasingly ubiquitously connected, controlled and surveilled society. What we find is the seamless integration of machinic systems into daily lives in the name of convenience and efficiency. The last thing these systems need is legally enforceable “rights” to ensure persons defer to them. Rights are exceptionally powerful legal constructs that, when improvidently granted, short-circuit exactly the type of democratic debate and empirical research that is necessary in our increasingly technologized world [27]. Conversely, the ‘autonomous intelligent machine’ is a sci-fi fantasy, a meme that functions to mask the environmental costs and human labour which form the backbone of contemporary AI. The robot rights debate further mystifies and obscures these problems. And it could easily provide a normative rationale for permitting powerful entities developing and selling AI to be absolved from accountability and responsibility.