Legal status of artificial biological non-human sapients?

[AMX]

What it says.
I was tempted to put this in SLAM, but it's not "If somebody were to gengineer beings of human-like intelligence, what legal status should they have?" (i.e. an ethics question), but rather "...what legal status would they have?" (i.e. a hypothetical scenario).

So...
Same as humans?
Animals?
Somewhere in between?
Objects?
Stuck in the legal system forever?
Or immediate destruction?

Also, why?

[Gil Hamilton]

If it is human-like intelligence, huh? I'd think it depends on whatever country they were born into.

In Denmark or Holland or one of the more liberal European countries plus Japan, Canada, and maybe South Korea, they'd probably have a short people of not having rights while legislation is passed granting it, including possible citizenship. I include Japan in that because they've been mentally preparing themselves for this event with robots, bio-engineered and otherwise, for like 50 years and their scientists are plucking away at it specifically with the intent of some day making a man. A place like England would get there, but much slower and in a similar, but swifter way to the process in the United States, see below.

A place like China wouldn't give them rights. They would be slaves and more importantly workers who won't add to the population problem. Most other dictatorial countries wouldn't have the ability to make such a person, so it's pretty moot there.


In the United States? That's trickier. I'm leaning toward stuck in the legal system for a very very long time as they are afforded one right at a time with every one a legal battle between liberals who want to grant them rights and conservatives who view them as property at best and godless affronts to be destroyed at worst. The problem that makes this even more sticky is that any such being designed and made in the United States would almost certainly be patented to hell and back by the company that made them, hence the conservatives who view them as property and don't want to give them rights. Needless to say, it would be ages before they are full citizens and can vote and such.

I think that eventually you might see legislation making it illegal to discriminate against "Persons of Differing Conception" or possibly a SCOTUS ruling intepreting the constitution to that effect (man, if conservatives crow about the constitution not protecting gays specifically, that would be a major firestorm). In the mean time and afterwards, the legal status of the genetically engineered people would likely be a major single voter issue in the same way abortion is now, with politicians milking it from both sides for all it is worth. I also expect there to be firestorms over the first time they try to send one of them to school with normal children. Also, others when one of these children is murdered by bigots and the defense attorney of the assholes argue it isn't murder because the child wasn't a real person and at best was destruction of property.

In the end, I'd expect alot of them becoming citizens of the Netherlands, Switzerland or Japan and moving there where they have protected rights.

[frogcurry]

Corporations are classed as "legal" persons in law, and are referred to in at least one example of EU law I've read as well as "natural" persons in such a way that I thought it was referring to aliens or robots as a general catch-all to cover all eventualities . So if a company can get legal status as a "legal" person, I'm sure you could use that as a basis to get an artifically created self deterministic entity classed as a legal person as well. Its a way in to get rights that avoid the human/ non-human fight.

[18-Till-I-Die]

There was a video game, called BioFREAKS, that actually handled how the creation of engineered people ('Synthoids') would be treated in the US.

In the BioFREAKS future United States, the FREAKS as they are called are basically slaves. They're used for entertainment. With arms chopped off and replaced by high tech weapons, they're forced to settle disputes between the companies who made and own them in mortal combat in armored areas underground.

The population is kept in check, paying to see this every week, like gladiatorial combat.

Its interesting to consider. And i imagine, not far from what would probably really happen.

[AMX]

OK...

Gil:
Summed up, "Depends on the country. Most'll give them human rights after a varying time stuck in the legal system; some will prefer to exploit them as cheap labor"?

frogcurry:
Using the "legal entity" (a.k.a. "artificial person") as a backdoor to personhood?
Interesting idea, but legal entities play by slightly different rules than natural persons - for example, a corporation can neither marry, nor has it a right to live...

18:
You're saying "Less than animals"?

[LeftWingExtremist]

I personally think anything with enough intelligence should be allowed all rights enjoyed by us. However what really happens depends in which country it happens. as other people said, in more liberal nations i think that said creature will get rights. but in america it would depend on which area of america we're talking about. if it's a more conservative area then siad creature might be destroyed by the right wingers. but in more northern states the creature might not be killed as quickly and may be allowed to live but not in a good way.

[Gil Hamilton]

I personally think anything with enough intelligence should be allowed all rights enjoyed by us. However what really happens depends in which country it happens. as other people said, in more liberal nations i think that said creature will get rights. but in america it would depend on which area of america we're talking about. if it's a more conservative area then siad creature might be destroyed by the right wingers. but in more northern states the creature might not be killed as quickly and may be allowed to live but not in a good way.

I don't think that right wingers could destroy them, even if they were made in the heart of Jesusland. That's because they be the immediate property of whichever company created them, who'd certainly not want to have them destroyed, regardless of their purpose. The torch wielding mobs in any place wouldn't be able to touch them.

What I question if they'd be made there or anywhere in the United States. The creation of a non-human sapient lifeform would not a standalone event by any means. There would likely be years previously of experiments and attempts in creating bioengineered lifeforms. Depending on what Congress and the Government looks like, they may have previously taken one look at what labratories have turned out and made the creation of such a lifeform in the OP illegal. After all, genetic engineering and artificial creation of life is something that alot of people, liberal and conservative on either ends of the spectrum, are very much against. Even in mainstream culture, there would be alot of resistance to such a creation, particularly since we've got half a century, currently of such things turning out to be monsters in our media. It would not take a huge amount of work for a group in the legislature to institute a federal ban on the creation of such life.

If the Federal law comes after the creation of the first batch of their kind, then is where we may see a legal battle which could result in the destruction of the beings in question.

However, I think that as things are, such lifeforms are more likely to be the products of South Korea or Japan in my opinion, both of which are more readily able to handle their creation. Potentially some parts as Europe as well, though I think that the Koreans or Japanese would beat them to it.

[18-Till-I-Die]

18:
You're saying "Less than animals"?

I dont see most humans accepting 'manufactured' life as being equal. Liberals would try to treat them like people, free them from their owners, etc. But most humans would treat them as slaves, especially here in the US where the companies that make them, i'm sure, would soon assert their 'ownership' over them.

I see sexdroids, slave-droids, worker-droids...fuck that i see bombsquads staffed with droids used as living minesweeping equipment. I see medical facilities staffed with bio-droid serfs, while they use their cousins in experiments like test animals. And God help the bio-droids if they end up showing skill at warfare...Clone Army indeed.

Let me put it this way: humans kill, enslave, rape and generally mistreat each other and we're all the same species. How do YOU think we'll treat clone-borgs? Looking back on history, on how we treat other human beings born out of other human beings like everyone else, do you REALLY think that we'll suddenly start treating manufactured people as anything better than expensive products that can speak.

"Less than animals" yeah i'd imagine so, or about equal to animals.

[Noble Ire]

For some reason, this thread brings to mind Pokemon (don't ask why), in which sentient creatures (as many of them would seem to be, or at least semi-sentient) are treated generally as gladiatorial slaves. Obviously, the moral implications of this were never really brought up (it being a kid's show and all), but its not beyond the realm of possibility, I suppose.

[Cao Cao]

For some reason, this thread brings to mind Pokemon (don't ask why), in which sentient creatures (as many of them would seem to be, or at least semi-sentient) are treated generally as gladiatorial slaves. Obviously, the moral implications of this were never really brought up (it being a kid's show and all), but its not beyond the realm of possibility, I suppose.

Having played some Pokemon games, I always felt like the evil slave-master forcing these things to fight for my glory while keeping them in a handy pocket-sized prison when I didn't need them.

[Cao Cao]

Um.. anyway, on topic:
This sort of reminds me of Xenosaga, a game series which has bio-engineered beings called Realians who look, act and think exactly like humans apart from their golden irises.
They are put to work in corporate jobs, civil service and the military but don't seem to have much in the way of human rights, most being considered property of the company that made them and presumably unable to leave the jobs they're assigned if they wanted to.

[Gil Hamilton]

<snip>

I don't see that at all. All of that assumes that their bioengineered beings aren't cheaper to produce and expend than normal human beings doing the same jobs.

Why would you have a sex bio-robot made if you could have a call girl or several on payroll for much cheaper? Would you really use hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of biodroid to purposely detonate bombs when you have an explosives team that can diffuse or safely dispose of the explosives for much cheaper?

I don't assume that people will treat them nicely or even more than property of whatever company made them, but I very much doubt that such beings would be used as laborers or soldiers, if only for the highly cynical reason that companies could save money using regular people. Why staff your factory with biorobots that you have to provide all their needs for when you can hire people who you just pay and don't have to take care of them?

You'd practically have to be malicious to do what you described and malice isn't very economical.

[Molyneux]

For some reason, this thread brings to mind Pokemon (don't ask why), in which sentient creatures (as many of them would seem to be, or at least semi-sentient) are treated generally as gladiatorial slaves. Obviously, the moral implications of this were never really brought up (it being a kid's show and all), but its not beyond the realm of possibility, I suppose.

See, I always hoped that if we found friendly aliens with world-destroying power that need humans to unlock it, it'd be more along the lines of Digimon...in those shows, if you piss off the monster enough it WILL eat your head.

[Srynerson]

Corporations are classed as "legal" persons in law, and are referred to in at least one example of EU law I've read as well as "natural" persons in such a way that I thought it was referring to aliens or robots as a general catch-all to cover all eventualities . So if a company can get legal status as a "legal" person, I'm sure you could use that as a basis to get an artifically created self deterministic entity classed as a legal person as well. Its a way in to get rights that avoid the human/ non-human fight.

The biggest problem with this argument is that the legal logic for treating corporations as "persons" is grounded on the premise that a corporation's shareholders, directors, officers, and employees are all humans and the corporation must have rights because all of those individuals have rights. I.e., to deny a corporation a right to own property, petition for redress of grievances, etc., would be to strip all of the constituent individuals involved in the corporation of those rights. That logic doesn't work with a singular artificial being.

[AMX]

Why would you have a sex bio-robot made if you could have a call girl or several on payroll for much cheaper?

There are fetishes that can't be satisfied by a human for biological or legal reasons.

[Teleros]

Depends both on the country and exactly what these artificial lifeforms are like. Human-level intelligence leaves a lot of leeway for example. Morals, physical strength etc will all have a role to play in this too - what if these creations have radically different morals? What if they don't see killing as a crime in the same way we do?
If they are basically artificially created humans then I imagine they would get full rights after a while at least (eg once psychiatric tests etc have been completed on them). The small cuddly types would probably be between humans and animals - a much-loved pet that can actually talk to you - although they might still have full rights. The intelligent monster? Where's my shotgun...

[Shroom Man 777]

We'd treat them as slaves for off-world colonies, but it's the death-penalty for them if they so much as step on the Earth's surface

[Gil Hamilton]

Depends both on the country and exactly what these artificial lifeforms are like. Human-level intelligence leaves a lot of leeway for example. Morals, physical strength etc will all have a role to play in this too - what if these creations have radically different morals? What if they don't see killing as a crime in the same way we do?
If they are basically artificially created humans then I imagine they would get full rights after a while at least (eg once psychiatric tests etc have been completed on them). The small cuddly types would probably be between humans and animals - a much-loved pet that can actually talk to you - although they might still have full rights. The intelligent monster? Where's my shotgun...

If they have human-like intelligence, I suppose it would depend on how they were raised. This beings have to grow up too, the same as any of us, and morals are learned.

Of course, the problem is that raising them is a problem. They would certainly be made by a company and depending on the company and the culture the company belongs to, these critters may not have a pleasant childhood at all.

Look at gorillas who are raised in captivity. Gorillas are pretty close to human scale intelligence, to the point they can learn significant amounts of sign language and wrap their brains around truly abstract thoughts (like death and an afterlife and such). Nowadays, alot of zoos and reserves treat their gorillas very well, alot like our retarded brothers (which is pretty accurate) rather than non-thinking animals. Those gorillas turn out pretty healthy.

But other places, particularly in the past before the current generation of zoologists came around, treat their gorillas like animals and keep them in single room exhibits with no privacy or anything to do to pass the time. These gorillas tend to become incredibly psychotic. When I was growing up, the Pittsburgh Zoo had a gorilla named Sultan who'd roll his shit up into neat perfect balls, line them up, and throw them at passersby. The poor bastard eventually passed on, but the ape was badly adjusted socially and crazier than hell, almost certainly due to his captivity.

Our hypothetical human intelligence engineered beings would likely turn the same way if they spend all their time as research specimens in cages without socialization to normalize their behavior or education. It's the sort of thing you might see in really shitty places in the world, but in most countries, I don't think that would happen. I'd think that alot of companies engineering these beings be it in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, or S. Korea would probably bring them up like children who lived in a research laboratory and raise them nursery style, while of course studying them. If they are raised as children, rather than property or animals, they shouldn't be psychotic or dangerously amoral. If they are raised as either, however, chances are they would be completely mad.