Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
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Zoltan Istvan

Word Investment Forum 2018
Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of United Nations Conference Trade And Development ( UNCTAD) with Sophia during the Word Investment Forum 2018. 22 october 2018. UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferré
Image from the World Investment Forum 2018 at Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sophia_humanoid_robot_-_Word_Investment_Forum_2018_(45450227232).jpg

Robots Should Not Have “Rights”

We live in an era when activists of various stripes argue that, well, everything should have rights. Animals, nature, plants, the moon, rivers, AI/robots, you name it.

Now, in Newsweek, the transhumanism popularizer and California gubernatorial candidate Zoltan Istvan argues that we should give robots rights so they will show mercy on us. Seriously. From his article, “Why Giving Rights to Robots Might One Day Save Humans:”

The discussion about giving rights to artificial intelligence and robots has evolved around whether they deserve or are entitled to them. Juxtapositions of this with women’s suffrage and racial injustices are often brought up in philosophy departments like the University of Oxford, where I’m a graduate student.

This is the problem with all non-human-rights activists. They continually compare their favored supposed rights-bearers with human beings who were denied equality in the past. But those denials were wrong — and in some cases evil — because inherent equals were treated as if they were unequal.

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An IT expert uses an EEG headset and machine learning technology to upload his brain into a computer, aiming for immortality. This scene captures a computer scientist developing an AI experiment
Image Credit: Ahmed - Adobe Stock

Why Transhumanism Is Unrealistic and Immoral

In 2016, transhumanism proselytizer Zoltan Istvan ran for president promising to defeat death while touring the country in a bus redesigned to look like a coffin. It was a great gimmick that made him, perhaps, the most famous transhumanist in the world. But his recent piece in Merion West “When We’re Overly Optimistic about the Pace of Life Extension Research” took a dark and disturbing turn. Read More ›
Bob Marks and Zoltan Istvan

Robert J. Marks II and Zoltan Istvan on the Promise — or Threat — of Artificial Intelligence

In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on AI — artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of an era if incalculable human progress because of the power of AI? Or are we threatened with being made obsolete and perhaps extinguished in an age of intelligent machines? Or, perhaps, a combination of both? The program features two experts who have Read More ›