Animals’ Race Against the Machines

Abstract

Nowadays, we are witnessing an acceleration of the debate on animal legal rights. The discussion has its legislative counterpart: a growing number of states have passed legislation widening animal legal rights or even granting them personhood. In comparison, the debate on artificial agents’ personhood is only theoretical, although some legislation recognizes the problem of autonomous artificial agents. One may argue that, because of the respective strengths of the arguments made, animals win their legal rights and machines don’t. Arguments for animal rights are simply more convincing and better grounded in this hitherto ethical debate. And I fully concur: although philosophical arguments for artificial agents’ personhood exist, machines sufficiently intelligent to be personified artificial agents do not. However, I will argue that artificial agents (e.g., computer programs) will nevertheless become commonly recognized as new non-human subjects faster than animals do. I will argue that this will not be the consequence of a sudden, revelatory acceptance of infocentric ethics, but rather the result of a strict anthropocentric efficiency calculation. Beside philosophical arguments, I will try to show the most probable scenario for personification of artificial agents. From the perspective of infocentrism, ethics may best be seen as having a cognitive or informational core that, combined with an assumption that mind and intelligence can be defined and replicated as computational systems, results in the conclusion that what matters for ethics is information processes, despite their “natural” or “artificial” origin. This perspective is often contrasted with biocentric and ecocentric ethics. Nevertheless, I will argue that proponents of biocentrism and ecocentrism should endorse granting personhood to artificial agents. I will try to show that this expansion of the circle of entities treated by law as subjects instead of objects, although derived from an anthropocentric point of view, may have a positive impact on advocacy for the rights of animals or even, as proposed by “deep green” ethicists, of non-animated parts of the environment. Animals will lose the race for personhood against the machines. But this machine victory will not be the animals’ defeat. To the contrary: it might be beneficial for all living entities.