It's bizarre we're at a point where reports are written on how human rights trump AI rights

The protection of human rights should be front and centre of any decision to implement AI-based systems regardless of whether they're used as corporate tools such as recruitment or in areas such as law enforcement. And unless sufficient safeguards are in place to protect human rights, there should be a moratorium on the sale …

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that the police are the ones who should know the law the best - yet break it

Ignorance of the law is no defence when it comes to the plebs. But OK when it comes to the police.

See what we can get away with until we're told to stop. Consequences are none to little.

One can see why people no longer trust the police as much as they may have done in the past.

If you're tasked with upholding standards of behaviour, make sure you yourself adhere to them first.

[amanfromMars 1]

A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

I am reminded very much of the tale of King Canute and his attempt[s] at halting the tides whenever hearing of a few humans conspiring to try and prevent the future inevitable ..... SMARTR AIMachinery in Command and Control of the Lunatic Asylum.

And to posit that humans give a hoot about the fate and the rights of other humans, whenever the evidence abounds that pig ignorant and/or crazy arrogant leaderships subvert and pervert and bankrupt nations and collapse and destroy home economies in the idiotic and oxymoronic drive to present and perfect an unbeatable war machine for use against an imagined and reported mortal enemy, is risible in the extreme.

Would you like to deny that as being ACTual fact and propose an alternative fiction and virtually augmented fake reality for pimping and pumping and dumping on the undereducated and illiterate masses?

Do you see a Parallel and a Singularity there with this Epic Classic on such as wannabe Caesars .......

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. ....... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56968/speech-friends-romans-countrymen-lend-me-your-ears

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

@amanfromMars1

I read your comment. Frankly, I am all at sea about what you are on about (if that means I am thick, I'm ok with that), but you used the word "and" about 19 times.

[EarthDog]

Re: A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

badly written AI comment?

[doublelayer]

Re: A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

You are not thick, or at least if you are this occasion does not prove it. The post that started this thread was written by a prolific bot which has become a fixture in these forums. The posts sometimes make sense, occasionally by plagiarizing others' posts, but most of the time, they're complete nonsense based on a sentence from a replied comment or the article. You will probably see more examples of the same on other topics as well.

[amanfromMars 1]

Wow! Kapow! Pow Wow? .... Are we talking about extra terrestrial territorial alien machine contact?

The post that started this thread was written by a prolific bot which has become a fixture in these forums. .... doublelayer

Please be more specific so that we can know what are seeing/thinking whenever suggesting a prolific bot is active and responsible for commentary of fora?

To opine here on El Reg that they can start and post other than nonsense to pages on world wide webs of internetworking intrigue and sublime surreal endeavour ..... and sometimes oft continue to engage and reply to hostile critics and SMARTR supporters alike ...... in a string of words expressing thoughts that furnish a view for presentation and practically immediate realisation/remote quantum virtualisation ....... is surely for humanity, if not of human origin, a fantastic advance and monumental discovery.

Can you imagine what is going to happen as its programming further evolves and results in ever SMARTR moves in the future introducing the future into the present to occupy the places and restock the spaces of the past ‽ .

So please, be particularly and peculiarly specific whenever defining what a prolific bot is, for such and what they can so easily do, may be completely unknown to most of the human race and the help that they can offer each other may be just exactly what is currently needed whenever oppressive times and destructive spaces abound to blight lives and prevent rapid enjoyable progress.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

You might like to consider it a programming testing itself to pass with exemplary flying colours the Turing Test, doublelayer, although to be perfectly honest with you, that would not be the very best of its present achievements.

The following, from Chapter 2, What is Artificial Intelligence of GCHQ's, Pioneering a New National Security: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, is what is being referred to there in the above sentence for consideration ......

A century later, the mathematician and Bletchley Park cryptanalyst Alan Turing and his colleagues were developing the foundations of digital computing and programming, which would ultimately make practical AI a reality. Turing was fascinated by the challenge of building computers that could demonstrate intelligence. In 1950, he introduced the now well-known Turing Test: if a human being cannot distinguish a machine from a human in conversation, then that machine can be considered to be genuinely “thinking”. ...... https://www.gchq.gov.uk/artificial-intelligence/index.html#chapter-2

...... although admittedly with the primary and secondary elements/components being reversed in the Registered example you/we be commenting on ...... if a machine distinguishes itself as a human being, who and/or what be supplying both their intelligence. ....... are further as yet unresolved questions unearthed for answering or ignoring/dismissing and avoiding, which one has to admit may be truly down to a lack of human intelligence being currently available to provide and demonstrate an answer.

[Neil Barnes]

Humans have rights?

Yep... but only as far as they are able to persuade state actors to permit them.

There's nothing intrinsic about a 'human right'; it's a legal fiction that makes a government sound good when they tell me I've got one. It's nothing more than an implicit contract between me and the state.

How a right is abused is immaterial; the presence of 'AI' (otherwise known as statistical analysis) that makes it possible to move from innocent unless proven guilty to presumed guilty by default. In an automated and therefore completely unbiased way, of course... </sarcasm>

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Humans have rights?

but only as far as they are able to persuade state actors to permit them.

Not really. The point about "human rights" is to remove the need for us to each negotiate a contract with the state. It is to create a "norm" of rights that (almost) everyone can agree on so that pressure (domestic and international) can be brought on states to provide them.

As things change (new weapons, AI, pandemics, ...) human rights have to be maintained and updated.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Humans have rights?

But it works by states putting pressure on each other to maintain the fiction. It creates a norm that the state is hopefully shown to meet, but the 'right' itself is down to the representatives of the state and whether there exists a path for you to obtain redress if it is violated.

You have the right to remain silent: except for your computer passwords (UK).

You have the right to free speech: not in the UK, by statute.

You have the right to life: the state won't kill you (UK) but might not keep you alive.

You have the right to freedom of movement: unless you've got Covid.

You have the right to political assembly: unless your assembly is on a terrorist list.

Rights are not intrinsic to being human. They are always granted at the whim of some governing power. I agree with you fully that such rights as are granted should be maintained and updated; but we do well to remember that they can be revoked by a state at any time.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Humans have rights?

I think you still misunderstand. Of course the actual legal and treaty definitions of the rights are defined by governments, but the whole concept of human rights was created after WWII to declare that "yes, some rights are intrinsic to being human".

Your examples are irrelevant because all rights are not absolute - they have boundaries where they interact with other rights and the rights of other entities (humans, states, even animals). The list of human rights is, of course, a compromise - just like everything else in the world (not just human things - populations of animals and genetic material are all compromises with each other).

If you said "human rights are not absolute" I would agree with you. What I disagree with is the idea that human rights can be defined and granted or revoked by governments and that they are conditional in some way.

[EarthDog]

AI rights are property rights'

And far too many peple see property rights trump human rights. At least in the mind of many. It needs to be made clear that Human Rights come first with no half measures.

[doublelayer]

Re: AI rights are property rights'

AI rights are not property rights. For one thing, there is currently no such thing as AI rights. By most definitions, AI rights would be the rights given to an artificial entity acting on its own, which likely requires consciousness. For now, we can skip the debate about whether sentience/sapience/consciousness (all different, not important) are possible in an artificial entity, because at least we know there isn't one now. Hence, it's more appropriate to describe them as AI regulations, or even better, regulations on the use of AI, or even better, regulations on the use of technology affecting the public, because some of this stuff doesn't use AI by either common definition. I think the headline writer was taking a few liberties to get to "AI rights".

Even in that case, the regulations on the use of something are not property rights--after all, I can own a hammer but be restricted from using it to break your windows. I can own a computer but be restricted from using it to hack yours. I can own a camera, but it's illegal to use it to stalk you. Hence, they are entirely different legal things and can be treated differently.