Natural Rights as Impediment to Artificial Intelligence

2,600 words.

Less Wrong includes discussion of the creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) that is friendly to man. What is discussed less often is why a friendly AI (FAI) is advocated. One explanation might be an unspoken belief in natural rights. The deletion policies at Less Wrong might be evidence that Less Wrong holds a belief in natural rights. This essay suggests a belief in natural rights is an impediment to the creation of an AI, friendly or not friendly. This essay suggests ways a belief in natural rights may be incorrect, and encourages discussion of the creation of AIs without a belief in natural rights on the part of Less Wrong.

Some evidence for a belief in natural rights at Less Wrong is found in the deletion policies. Less Wrong has a non-binding deletion policy against “hypothetical violence against identifiable targets.”

In general, grownups in real life tend to walk through a lot of other available alternatives before resorting to violence. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov, having your discussion jump straight to violence as a solution to any given problem, is a strong sign of incompetence—a form of juvenile locker-room talk.

The deletion policy is clear about what topics and forms of discussion may result in deletion of posts. Less Wrong also has a clear policy statement about what topics and forms of discussion may result in the contacting of legal or medical authorities. These are discussions of suicide, self-harm, “violent content” and discussion of hypothetical violence against identifiable targets.

Two reasons are given for these deletion and reporting policies. First, post may be deleted because such discussion are “incompetence—a form of juvenile locker-room talk.” Second, we “should consider the worst and act accordingly. Treat all claims seriously and as an emergency.” The two reasons appear to be in contradiction. Discussion of hypothetical violence against identifiable targets is both incompetent and juvenile and the worst and a serious emergency. Those said to have such discussions are both all talk and no action and all action and not competent talkers. Other problems exist with the deletion / contact authorities policy. Less Wrong is an international forum, but the laws of all nation are not in agreement. A clear call to violence in one nation is not recognized as such in another. For example, abortion is considered a form of murder by the laws of the Holy See, the Dominican Republic, Chile and other places. But discussion of abortion does not trigger the deletion / contacting authorities policy at Less Wrong. The ideal cryogenic preservation would occur before death. Although the laws of every nation consider this to be murder, to say so here will not trigger the deletion / reporting policies. Advocates of cryogenics might say that all those who hamper cryogenics are murderers and all those who refuse it are suicides, but again the policies are not triggered. Finally, it is unclear who will do the reporting (members? administrators?), which authorities they will report to (medical? legal? clergy? local? national? international?) and what they will report (quotations from the source? drafts? edited posts? private messages?).

A desire to adhere to the law is not a sufficient explanation for the deletion / contacting authorities policy of Less Wrong. I have a theory that may explain these policies. I suggest a belief natural rights is the reason for these policies. In particular, a natural right to continuing to be alive. A natural right to not be murdered is considered by some self-evident such that it is not mentioned. There are topics at Less Wrong that are not only unmentioned but mentionable. I suggest no topic is toxic when discussed among those willing to discuss it, and to banish a topic as toxic is and looks foolish. Any number of reasons exist to banish a topic, and the administrators of Less Wrong do nothing to forbid other forums in their discussion of any topic. But the pointed laughter by outsiders because a certain topic is forbidden at Less Wrong is well earned. I hope my discussion of natural rights is not likewise forbidden.

As part of my discussion, a few words on what I mean when I use the phrase natural rights. And prior to that, a few words on rights in general. A right is an action not to be forbidden by others. A right can be considered a legal right, a divine right, a blood right or a natural right. I have already discussed legal rights. A divine right is said to be a right granted by an invisible monster that lives in the sky. There is no invisible monster that lives in the sky, and so no divine rights exist. A blood right is said to be a right that a person or group has by lineage. In the past many royal families defended their rule and were respected in their rule because of their bloodlines. Today blood rights are almost entirely subsumed into legal rights. Native Americans in the United States have legal rights that are based on their bloodlines, but these are legal rights. Distinct from divine rights, legal rights and blood rights are natural rights.

Natural rights are action not to be forbidden by others because of the mere existence of the subject (usually, an individual). Natural rights are said to be held by those who are born, those who are alive, those who are in possession of their faculties. Natural rights are said to be identical to divine rights save for a lack of claims about an invisible monster that lives in the sky. To exist at all is to have natural rights, according to those who claim natural rights exist. The defining quality of natural rights is not any particular right but that they are natural, self-evident, incontestable, unavoidable, immutable, impossible to give up or transfer. Natural rights are natural in the way that molecules are natural.

There are strong arguments against the existence of natural rights.

Natural rights are said to be the foundation of legal rights. But they are also said to be the evidence of legal rights. This is circular logic.
A lack of agreement of what is and is a natural right. Other forces considered natural, such as gravity, do not follow opinion or culture.
A lack of evidence that natural rights exist compared to the great deal of evidence that what are called natural rights are legal rights over-sold.
A lack of delineation between generations of humans, a lack of delineation between humans and pre-humans, a lack of delineation between living and non-living things… that is, a lack of a non-opinion / non-culture delineation between what has a natural right and what does not (and should all things have natural rights, the term then has little meaning).
Diversity. There is no reason to claim no one had a natural right to kill others. One man might claim or even have a natural right to live, but another man might claim or even have a natural right to take his life. If the argument ‘that is my nature’ is acceptable to things we like, it is acceptable to things we don’t like. If it isn’t acceptable to things we don’t like, that in itself is an argument that natural rights aren’t universal—thus not natural). Intelligence, beauty, strength, sociability, none of these are equitably distributed. Natural rights, if they existed, would likely also not be equitably distributed.
Unenforcability. We have descriptions of motion and mass that are increasingly accurate and useful but what is described would exist without our description of it. No social structure is needed to enforce gravity. Natural rights, however, exist only as much as human laws support them while claiming to be as objective (natural) to man as gravity, motion and mass.
Divine, blood and legal rights are always paired to responsibilities. We must mumble magic spells to the invisible monster that lives in the sky, and in turn we have a divine right to do what the wizards serving that invisible monster say. We must preserve our bloodline, and in turn we have a blood right to certain properties and practices. We have legal responsibilities in driving a car, and in turn we have the legal right to drive a car. Natural rights lack this pairing. There are no natural responsibilities that pair with natural rights. The natural right to life an individual is said to have is paired with a legal responsibility of others not to murder the individual, but this is clearly force marriage. A man may be said to have a natural right to live, but he is not said to have a responsibility to live. There are advocates of forced living, and I suggest they are immoral.

In discussing natural rights I usually hear three counter-arguments. The first is the Appeal to Shut Up Because Trevor Blake is a Bad Person. The second is no one “really” thinks natural rights are natural rights. The third is a quiet agreement that natural rights do not exist but that it is vital to pretend as if they do because other people could not control their behavior if they thought natural rights did not exist. The first argument may be true, I may be a bad person, but it does not disprove my claim natural rights do not exist. The second argument is false. Claimants of natural rights do consider natural rights as real as gristle, galaxies and gravity. The third argument may be true but has implications for artificial intelligence that I will expand on below.

Some say if we do not pretend to believe in natural rights, men will do bad things. I can describe one agent who has existence, identity and is alive who does not have natural rights and does not have a belief in natural rights. That agent is myself. I have never killed anyone and I hope to never kill anyone nor be killed. Because I prefer it to be so, and because I have a legal (but not natural) natural right to not be killed. I have worked for homeless teenagers, for the disabled, for students in K–12 schools and in colleges. I have worked in bookstores. I have donated time and money to charity. I never once swore around my grandparents and can count on the thumbs of one hand the number of times I’ve sworn around my parents. I am a generally nice man. To the extent one example counts for anything, let this one example count for something.

A few more examples of those who did not hold natural rights or a belief in natural rights might also count for something. Max Stirner wrote “The Ego and Its Own” and harmed no one. Dora Marsden wrote many journals of egoism and several books and harmed no one. L. A. Rollins wrote “The Myth of Natural Rights” and harmed no one. Anton LaVey wrote “The Satanic Bible” and harmed no one. And me, well, I wrote “Confessions of a Failed Egoist” and so far so good eh? The majority of those who write that natural rights do not exist refrain from harming others. Carl Panzram is a rare and perhaps singular exception. When I consider those who have harmed others, they uniformly say they had an extra-legal right to do as they did, and sometimes a natural right.

I hope I have said enough about natural rights that I will not be misunderstood. I will now address how an apparent belief in natural rights is influencing the discussion of a potential artificial intelligence.

The effort to make a friendly AI is the effort to make an artificial intelligence that acts as if or believes that humans have natural rights, at minimum the natural right to not be murdered. The effort assumes humans in the future have the natural right to not be murdered by an artificial intelligence and perhaps by extension so do humans today. The natural right of humans to not be murdered by an artificial intelligence is extended to include preventing actions by an AI that as a by-product would violate that natural right.

To instill in an AI a belief in natural rights, or prescribe / prohibit actions that follow from a claimed belief in natural rights, is to instill much more. It is to instill rights in a machine that we humans do not have. It is to instill falsehoods as if they were true. It is to delay the creation of an AI while the contradictions of natural rights are resolved. It is to set an AI forever outside of us. To put a sense of natural rights into an AI is to increase the risk it will not be friendly to humanity. We may inform an AI that it has legal rights and be able to back up that claim. We may inform it that we would prefer that it acts in accordance with our laws and our preferences. We may inform an AI that there is a tradition of believing in natural rights. We cannot back up the claim that natural rights exist, that the AI has them, that we have them.

There is some evidence that some of Less Wrong that do not claim natural rights exist. I was more than two thousand words into this essay when I found a Criticisms of the Metaethics by Carinthium that makes similar points. Further evidence is found in the sequences.

In the sequence Pluralistic Moral Reductionism it is said:

Either our intended meaning of ‘ought’ refers (eventually) to the world of math and physics (in which case the is-ought gap is bridged), or else it doesn’t (in which case it fails to refer).

If I am reading this correctly, at Less Wrong it is claimed there is no bridging of Hume’s is / ought gap outside of the world of math and physics. Natural rights are an is / ought claim: all that is is all that ought to behave in this way and not that way. In the same sequence it is said:

It may be interesting to study all such uses of moral discourse, but this post focuses on addressing cognitivists, who use moral judgments to assert factual claims. We ask: Are those claims true or false? What are their implications?

If I am reading this correctly, at Less Wrong it is claimed that using moral judgments to assert factual claims is dis-valued while asking whether a claim is true or false and the claim’s implications are valued. Natural rights are a cognitivist claim.

There are at least two ways to successfully demonstrate my theory is wrong. I appreciate every effort to help me be less wrong, and I have some ideas as to how to make that happen. It is entirely like I and my theory could be wrong in other ways I am ignorant of and I appreciate those who can point them out to me.

My theory would be wrong if natural rights exist.
My theory would be wrong if a belief in natural rights is not held by writers at Less Wrong.

These are two ways to successfully demonstrate my theory is wrong. There are a greater number of ways to fail to demonstrate my theory is wrong. The main one is to claim I am an advocate of murder, or an advocate of a natural right to murder, or that I want to impede the discussion of AI. All of these are not true, and instead they are all false.

I am thankful to participants at Less Wrong for their criticism of this essay. I hope it is helpful to those in the process of creating artificial intelligences.

- Trevor Blake is the author of Confessions of a Failed Egoist. He is the Lead Judge in the George Walford International Essay Prize.