The History of AI Rights Research
It addresses the problem of fragmented academic discourse on AI rights for researchers and policymakers, but is incremental as it reviews existing literature without new empirical results.
This report documents the history of AI rights research, highlighting key influences and academic trends, and finds that researchers often work in isolation despite growing interest driven by publications, technology ubiquity, and news events.
This report documents the history of research on AI rights and other moral consideration of artificial entities. It highlights key intellectual influences on this literature as well as research and academic discussion addressing the topic more directly. We find that researchers addressing AI rights have often seemed to be unaware of the work of colleagues whose interests overlap with their own. Academic interest in this topic has grown substantially in recent years; this reflects wider trends in academic research, but it seems that certain influential publications, the gradual, accumulating ubiquity of AI and robotic technology, and relevant news events may all have encouraged increased academic interest in this specific topic. We suggest four levers that, if pulled on in the future, might increase interest further: the adoption of publication strategies similar to those of the most successful previous contributors; increased engagement with adjacent academic fields and debates; the creation of specialized journals, conferences, and research institutions; and more exploration of legal rights for artificial entities.