I’M SO HAPPY YOU ARE HERE

Human, Animal, Robot

Hiroko Komatsu

On what grounds can we say we have the right to bring new life into the world? Who has granted us this privilege? The anti-natalist view holds that ‘the world would be better if humans were left unborn.’ Such a view is predicated on the fact that a person with such a view must necessarily be alive, and it is impossible for that person to choose such a situation in which they are unborn. When a person is born into this world, they do not have any rights over their birth, which can be said to be a form of unilateral violence exercised by those seeking to bring that person into the world. Is there really any justification for such a 'structure that allows a being to be born onto this earth?'

And if unilaterally bringing life into this world can be considered violence, can the one-sided creation of a sentient robot also be considered violence? Regarding reproduction, David Bentar makes the ethical argument that the ‘perception of pain = evil,’ and if we take an accounting of good and evil, we can arrive at the general understanding that it is ‘bad to bring a new being into existence’ which raises the question: is it permissible to create a robot that experiences pain like a human? There is a demand to develop robots that can feel pain to facilitate the socialization of robots and integrate them into society. There is a demand for robots with autonomous artificial intelligence that can operate without human intervention, such as companion robots that relieve human loneliness, care robots that provide elderly care in hospitals and nursing homes, and robots that facilitate childhood education. The artificial intelligence in these autonomous robots needs to function satisfactorily within ethical boundaries. These robots must be able to pick up on non-verbal communication to interact effectively with humans; they must be able to perceive facial expressions and detect human feelings and intent. Some argue that the fundamental key for robots to achieve this level of socialization is the nervous system, which is central to pain perception. By learning to perceive pleasure and pain, they claim that robots will be able to make decisions based on undesirable and desirable outcomes on behalf of humans. Others argue against the research and development of machines that can experience suffering. While the former ignores the fundamental question of whether the sense of self and its capacity for subjective experience is based on a biological system or if it can be based on an artificial system, the latter reason that the development of such pain-sensing robots would qualitatively increase the amount of suffering in the world. The approach of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, founded in 1999, which seeks to protect the rights and welfare of sentient artefacts differs from the anti-natalist approach which claims that it is wrong to allow sentient robots to come into existence.

The movement for the ethical treatment of pain-sensing robots has parallels to the movement for the ethical treatment of animals. Descartes described animals as ‘automata, or moving machines’ bound to an existence devoid of emotion and without consciousness of pleasure or pain. Although animals exhibit a reaction that suggests pain and suffering when they are butchered and immolated in the name of experimentation, Descartes argues that their cries are tantamount to the sound of poorly oiled cogs in a malfunctioning machine. Even though humanity now has a much better understanding of animal rights and welfare, starting with Peter Singer’s seminal Animal Liberation, animals continue to be brought into existence every day. Humans orchestrate the breeding of animals in the livestock industry and although their lifespans vary in length, they are all ultimately slaughtered for consumption. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2017, over 8 billion animals were killed for food in the United States, which also means that over 8 billion new animals were brought into existence.

In the beginning, ‘life’ was without cause, but now it is assigned meaning, interpreted, and measured using a scale of value. In the system of the modern state, we are born bearing the weight of many duties and obligations, and we must dedicate our lives to the production of something for society and to fulfil these responsibilities. Productivity is measured by various factors of output which contribute to economic policy in the form of labor and capital; it is the level of efficiency in generating added value from resources. Productivity is a blunt calculation utilized to measure the efficiency of production by dividing output by input, and productivity can be maximized by decreasing inputs and increasing outputs. Anti-natalism is an innovative modality of ‘life’ that resists life as a measurement of productivity or life as a liability and instead offers a paradoxical affirmation of the meaning of ‘life.’