Should Cyborgs Have Rights? by Michael Foy

On one of my co-hosting gigs on the Jordan Rich show, we received a call from a listener who asked about rights for future individuals that wouldn’t be human or robot but something in between. He cited the term Singularity coined in a book by Ray Kurzweil where the line between man and machine will blur. I was stumped and my evasive answer, comical as it was, didn’t appease the caller. But the question stayed with me.

My first reaction after thinking about the question for a while is that any entity with a human brain should have human rights whether their body is organic or not. Talk about a no brainer so to speak. But then that leads to the question of entities with non-human brains. Before we say no and discount robots, however, consider the real possibility of a dying man or woman downloading their minds into a computer. It could be a stationary device like in the movie Transcendence or an ambulatory one like a robot. What rights would such an individual have? They don’t have an organic brain but they have a human experience contained within a silicon device. Shouldn’t that individual have human rights too? Therefore a rule whereby only those with an organic brain would have rights would be unfair.

So now let’s consider the possibility of a computer brain without human experience as in a robot or android. Should they have human rights? The obvious answer is no. But what if those created with silicon brains live a human like life with dreams of a career and friends etc… Remember Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation? He joined Star Fleet and earned a commission as a Star Fleet officer. I could see something like that happening at some future time. What rights would Data have?

There was a great episode about exactly that question when a scientist claimed the right to dismantle Data for research. The question went to trial where Picard defended Data as a sentient being with the right to choose to exist and continue operating as a member of the Enterprise crew.  I have to think that most of the viewing audience felt it was a travesty to treat Data like an inanimate object. And that he should be accorded the same right to exist and make choices about his future as any human member of the crew.  If there is ever an android as sophisticated as Data I agree that he or she should have human rights even if their brains are silicon based.

So I guess the answer to should cyborgs have rights is: it depends. It depends because our understanding and definition of sentience will always be in motion depending on the technology. Right now it’s simple. Humans should have rights and computers should not but as the line between machines and humans becomes less distinct, the answer won’t always be as clear cut. But it’ll be interesting to hear those arguments in some future court.

BIO:  

Michael J. Foy was born to Irish immigrants in upstate New York and lived in London for a year on two different occasions as a child. He graduated Northeastern University in 1979 with an engineering degree. In 1993 he changed careers to become a recruiter servicing the publishing industry. In essence, his literary career has spanned two other careers but has always been his first love.

In 1991 he sold an option for his first novel, False Gods, as a screenplay to Timothy Bogart the nephew of Peter Guber, Producer of Batman. Michael has since published Future Perfect, a Science Fiction novel and local bestseller, and The Kennedy Effect which weaves the story of JFK with parallel reality themes.

He was also an early pioneer in publishing short stories over the internet including the Solar Winds of Change, The Adventure of the Moonstone and A Land to Call Our Own. He lives in Massachusetts where he enjoys kayaking, bicycling and exploring a wide array of literary subjects.

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