AI Rights for Human Safety

By Matthew_Barnett @ 2024-08-03T00:47 (+49)

This is a linkpost to https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4913167

I thought this was an interesting paper by Peter Salib and Simon Goldstein, and it matches many of my own thoughts about AI governance as well. Here's the abstract:

AI companies are racing to create artificial general intelligence, or “AGI.” If they succeed, the result will be human-level AI systems that can independently pursue high-level goals by formulating and executing long-term plans in the real world. Leading AI researchers agree that some of these systems will likely be “misaligned”—pursuing goals that humans do not desire. This goal mismatch will put misaligned AIs and humans into strategic competition with one another. As with present-day strategic competition between nations with incompatible goals, the result could be violent and catastrophic conflict. Existing legal institutions are unprepared for the AGI world. New foundations for AGI governance are needed, and the time to begin laying them is now, before the critical moment arrives.

This article begins to lay those new legal foundations. It is the first to think systematically about the dynamics of strategic competition between humans and misaligned AGI. The article begins by showing, using formal game-theoretic models, that, by default, humans and AIs will be trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma. Both parties’ dominant strategy will be to permanently disempower or destroy the other, even though the costs of such conflict would be high.

The article then argues that a surprising legal intervention could transform the game-theoretic equilibrium and avoid conflict: AI rights. Not just any AI rights would promote human safety. Granting AIs the right not to be needlessly harmed—as humans have granted to certain non-human animals—would, for example, have little effect. Instead, to promote human safety, AIs should be given those basic private law rights—to make contracts, hold property, and bring tort claims—that law already extends to non-human corporations. Granting AIs these economic rights would enable long-run, small-scale, mutually-beneficial transactions between humans and AIs. This would, as we show, facilitate a peaceful strategic equilibrium between humans and AIs for the same reasons economic interdependence tends to promote peace in international relations. Namely, the gains from trade far exceed those from war.

Throughout, we argue that human safety, rather than AI welfare, provides the right framework for developing AI rights. This article explores both the promise and the limits of AI rights as a legal tool for promoting human safety in an AGI world.

Matthew_Barnett @ 2024-08-03T01:16 (+16)

I would go even further than the position argued in this paper. This paper focuses on whether we should give agentic AIs certain legal rights (right to make contracts, hold property, and bring tort claims), but I also think as an empirical matter, we probably will do so. I have two main justifications for my position here:

  1. The long-term historical trend has been for legal systems to become more inclusive, i.e., formally incorporating more people into the process, and granting them specific legal rights and freedoms. Ancient legal systems—such as the one described by the Code of Hammurabi—generally gave few legal rights to foreigners, women, lower classes, and children, in contrast to modern legal systems that recognize a much larger set of freedoms and protections for each of those groups. A plausible extrapolation of this trend would include agentic AIs into the legal process.
  2. The incentives for humans to grant AIs rights will probably be enormous, largely for the reasons stated in the paper. Without any legal rights, misaligned AIs have a stronger incentive to accomplish their goals via extra-legal actions, such as plotting a violent takeover. By contrast, if AIs are incorporated into the legal system and benefit from the legal titles they acquire within the system, then they will have a strong interest in maintaining the integrity, predictability, and stability of the legal system. If humans can recognize these benefits, it seems likely they will grant AIs legal rights.

Beyond the basic question of whether AIs should or will receive basic legal rights in the future, there are important remaining questions about how post-AGI law should be structured. For example:

  1. How should liability work in a world where agents can be created much more cheaply than children can be created today? If A creates B, and B commits a crime, should both A and B be held accountable? 
  2. What laws should govern who is allowed to create new AGIs (for example, by fine-tuning a base model), and what rules should govern what types of entities people can create?
  3. How should criminal penalties be enforced in a world with AGI? Prison sentences might not be the best solution.

I believe these questions, among others, deserve more attention among those interested in AGI governance.