I just read Daniel Roth’s article, Torture Me Elmo: Do Humanlike Machines Deserve Human Rights? . The article doesn’t so much defend the rights of machines, as it questions the effects of being a torturer. Roth writes, “The brain is hardwired to assign humanlike qualities to anything that somewhat resembles us… And so, either we get tougher on technology abuse or it undermines laws about abuse of animals.”

I remember students protesting the Makah Nation’s whale hunt and holding placards that read, “Save a Whale, Kill a Makah.” You’d never get away with saying, “Save the Seals, Kill a Canadian” or even, “Save Laptops, Kill an Amish.”

If it’s indeed true that we’re hardwired with an affinity to anything resembling us, then before we begin codifying bot rights, we might want to recognize legislative limitations. While we’re meant to be equal, entire groups of people are all too easily dehumanized outside of the vacuum of the law.

While I found this article interesting, I can imagine the human-like hierarchies that could exist within machine rights. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s most advanced A.I. is still supposed to only have the reasoning of a 4-year-old. We can hardly blame a kid if he decides to throw a tantrum and poke our eyes out. But would we be as quick to stop the torture of an obsolete robot with persistent multiple errors and an active fluid addiction? How do we feel about male on male ports?