I’m pretty sure the NFL will be an all-robot league one day. Blocks getting knocked off minus the concussion-related litigation. But what if the machines grow intelligent and hire lawyers? Who am I kidding? They’ll be the clients and the lawyers.

In a Scientific American piece, Hutan Ashrafian isn’t only concerned about conscious machines extincting us but also how we will treat them and how they’ll treat each other. An excerpt:

Academic and fictional analyses of AIs tend to focus on human–robot interactions, asking questions such as: would robots make our lives easier? Would they be dangerous? And could they ever pose a threat to humankind?

These questions ignore one crucial point. We must consider interactions between intelligent robots themselves and the effect that these exchanges may have on their human creators. For example, if we were to allow sentient machines to commit injustices on one another—even if these ‘crimes’ did not have a direct impact on human welfare—this might reflect poorly on our own humanity. Such philosophical deliberations have paved the way for the concept of ‘machine rights.’ …

Animals that exhibit thinking behaviour are already afforded rights and protection, and civilized society shows contempt for animal fights that are set up for human entertainment. It follows that sentient machines that are potentially much more intelligent than animals should not be made to fight for entertainment.

Of course, military robots are already being deployed in conflicts. But outside legitimate warfare, forcing AIs and robots into conflict, or mistreating them, would be detrimental to humankind’s moral, ethical and psychological well-being.•