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Folks are mocking the idea of robot rights during the biggest pro-social bot purge in history.
It's a crystal clear case for why robot rights are human rights.
It's a crystal clear case for why robot rights are human rights.
Addressing some feedback below
To start, I should say that I completely understand and sympathize the frustration with bots at the moment, and with the AI discourse in general.
I also appreciate the impression that any discussion of "robot rights" in this moment seems to reinforce corporate propaganda.
I also appreciate the impression that any discussion of "robot rights" in this moment seems to reinforce corporate propaganda.
The general animosity towards bots in this moment also makes it difficult to organize resistance to the political realities of a massive, network-wide bot purge. In times like these, who would speak up for the bots?
The bot purge on Twitter is a fantastic example of how bots and simple artificial agents of all sorts are already deeply embedded in our communities, and have been for some time. And so an attack on those agents just is an attack on *us*.
The point here is not at all to exaggerate the capabilities of these simple software routines. The point is that these simple pieces of software are situated within our communities in complex and non-intuitive ways, and to deal with them you have to deal these complexities.
Taking the social and material realities of software serious requires that we not reduce things so quickly to brute categories like "is living" or "is sentient" or "is human", because these are idealizations that will only awkwardly fit the actual situation.
The bot purge is also a clear example where it's obviously mistaken to associate bots with corporate propaganda tools. It's not the corporate bots being taken offline, its the handcrafted bots that a few people put a lot of love into and that large communities benefit from.
These bots are important participants in the community, and their access to the "public square" deserves to be protected and defended as part of the ongoing project of protecting people and communities from injustice.
This all seems to me a straightforward motivation for discussing "robot rights" as a helpful framework for addressing issues that of technology use and access that impacts real people and communities today. No speculation, no hype, aligned with all social justice movements.
So when people immediately shoot down the mention of "robot rights", there's a few things that go wrong.
There are some surface misunderstandings, such as "rights are only for living things".
There are some surface misunderstandings, such as "rights are only for living things".
A deeper issue is believing that "rights" are meant to track some "natural" distinction, rather than being a deliberate social and institutional practice for building a world we want to live in.
But the deepest misunderstanding is believing the discussion of "robot rights" is itself unhelpful in this moment, a moment again where hundreds (thousands?) of bots are being purged from the network for basically no reason.
A moment where we are witnessing firsthand how such a purge directly impacts our own lives, our own experience of a network we shared with these bots, that some of us experienced as builders of bots we were proud to let loose on the network.
No person was booted from the networks; people are free to tweet the bot's output by hand. The purge only targets the bots. But by targeting the bots it destroys the communities and cultures we've grown around these bots as reliable participants in the network.
So again, it seems to me that this moment could not make more clear the message and motivation of "robot rights" as a concept relevant to our lives and our communities today.
To say the idea is unhelpful in this moment because "robots aren't alive" is to ignore the material ways that bots figure into our communities today. It gives in to the sci-fi narrative of bots as far future human-like agents, leaving no room for the reality of bots today.
To think that "robot rights" is unhelpful is ultimately an admission that the discourse operates at a level of ideology, and to counter the ideology of corporate tech abuse we have to be dogmatic in our refusal to acknowledge software participants in the social fabric.
The rebuttal "robots aren't alive" operates at the level of ideology, at the level of brute categorization: the issue is settled merely by considering the kind of thing it is, rather than the circumstances of its operation and the communities that might be impacted.
I think now is a great time to reject these ideologies, and to take seriously the material and social realities of software agents. How they are situated within networks of oppression and control and resistance, as both agents and targets of power.
Okay, rant over! I appreciate the constructive feedback and engagement.
I didn't see this follow up thread until after I wrote my rant last night, and it raises an issue I didn't address above.
Nora's bots are awesome and they deserve all the credit in the world for populating our network with automated whimsy.
Nora's bots are awesome and they deserve all the credit in the world for populating our network with automated whimsy.
They also make awesome jewelry go buy some.
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David J. Gunkel @David_Gunkel
ยท
Apr 17, 2023
Another interesting & insightful thread/rant from @eripsa on the subject of #robotrights The entire thread is worth a read, but this one sentence nails it. #rights are not some natural metaphysical quality; they are a deliberate social and institutional practice.