Stuart, Susan. “Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life–should artificial systems have rights?.” (2006).
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The defining features of intelligence, consciousness and life are not clearly prescribed. We cannot say of X that if, and only if, it has properties p, q and r will it also have intelligence, be alive, or be conscious. What we tend to look for when ascribing inner states to another system – I shall use the term ‘system’ to cover both organic and inorganic entities and I shall examine three different areas of this theory of ‘systems’: intelligent systems, conscious systems and living systems – is appropriate behaviour. Then on a basis of that behaviour it is prudent that we behave with the other system as though it has, for example, intelligence, even though we cannot be absolutely certain that it does [viz. [2]]. Work in artificial life (A-Life) suggests that it will only be a matter of a some short period of time, perhaps fifty to a hundred years, until we can create a living system. Whether such a system will be living in inverted commas, or quite naturally alive in an organic sense only it can know for sure, and it would seem wise to consider the rights we might wish to afford an artificially produced living system before it has the complexcapabilities to decide for itself.