Will any government - or legal framework applicable to more than, let's say, 1 million people - provide legal rights (along the lines of a right to exist) to an intelligence based on silicon?
This could be, e.g., an AI or a full/partial brain upload from a biological intelligence.
This might need some finessing and I'm not a lawyer. The spirit of the question is, broadly, when will the existence of intelligence existing within a computer be sufficiently established that society deems it worthy of legal recognition?
1,000
1.00I really hope not unless it is a mind upload with proof of identity preservation and qualia experiencing aka not a philosophocal zombie in some way.
Two lines of questioning here, going in reverse order:
What would qualify as proof of qualia? By the colloquial definition of "proof", we don't have proof that other people experience qualia, but we generally think it is morally good that all people are afforded rights. Is there some principled reason to think that whatever criteria we apply to other people (whatever those criteria may be) could not also be applied to AI? If there is such a principled reason, is it sufficiently strong to outweigh the value of being precautious so as to not accidentally enslave billions of sentient entities?
Why are mind uploads necessary? If we grant that digital consciousness is possible, why would the origin of the intelligence matter?
On the first line of reasoning we can presume people have qualia because we have qualia ourselves, at least i do, thus other physical machinery similar or equal to me like a twin probably produces the same phenomenon, furthermore we should not ignore the risk of accidental slavery and thus we should attempt to prevent such A.Is from being made unless these do not have qualia for sure, and mind uploads would be beneficial for us personally which means it is a good idea rather than creating a new type of being to compete of us to which we would be morally obliged to give power of choice, specially considering how much better than us they would be, basically all my decisions are for the benefit of us.
A brain upload from biological intelligence , you mean the same technology mentioned in the TV series Pantheon right? I think it's doable if less moral or ethical boundaries are set for the experiment, however in reality that's hard, humans are afraid of death and ethic challenges which means such experiment like Brain upload would be prohibited in the first place. At least it's not going to happen before 2050 from my point of view.
I wouldn't assume computers in 2050 – especially quantum ones – are still made of silicon. I went to check and apparently present-day quantum chips are also made of silicon, but I don't think that's necessary.
If the spirit of the question is about intelligences based on artificial substrates, write that as the title of the question ;)