Personhood Rights for Sentient Artificial Intelligence: Ramifications for Human Rights

Notions of hybridity, augmentation and virtual embodiment permeate the technocultural scape of contemporary times. The avalanche of information and technology has ushered in a novel way of perceiving our world. The evolving context of self-improving sentient artificial intelligence and the resultant demand for conferring personhood rights and civil privileges to electronic personality cannot be examined without placing it in the larger milieu of human civil rights and the risks and benefits it entails for the human race. Emerging and converging technologies are shaping and redefining our material world in hitherto unimaginable ways. Hence it becomes imperative that such technologies be designed and deployed in a manner that ensures the safety and survival of the one sentient organic life form on the face of the earth. Regulation of AI rights is quintessential to ensuring human rights. Speculative fiction has time and again come out with cautionary tales of the possible aftermath of exponential technological growth. An AI that is programmed with self-improvement and problem-solving abilities to mimic and act like a human being might consider itself an equal to his organic counterpart. Thus all distinctions between the organic and the non-organic, man and machine would be obliterated and humanity shall witness the emergence of a super intelligent race infinitely stronger and powerful than itself. The present paper discusses the intersection of AI rights with human rights by analysing its diverse fictional treatment by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Brad Aiken and Dan Brown. As autonomous beings with abilities that surpass human intelligence and capabilities would greatly be integrated into our socio-cultural fabric with the coming technological singularity, human rights would be significantly refurbished in terms of AI rights.