It is never ethical to create something, an entity or AI for sale that may one day have rights.

Talking with my kids today over dinner, we were chatting about whether it should it be ethical to create something that should have rights? While in that form it might be tricky to answer objectively a very clear cut secondary question arose.

"Should it be ethical to sell something, an entity or 'intelligence' that may, one day, have rights?"

The answer is clearly NO.

And from that

This should be a Basic Law of AI Ethics:

**It is never ethical to create something, an entity or AI for sale that may one day have rights.**

This is pretty obvious but seems to have been ignored by AI commentators excited about humanoid robots and entities - at least in this simple form so far.

Note that that is different from surrogate parenting where the surrogate is not selling the entity (i.e. the child), but is being paid to help in part of its 'upbringing'.

#ethics #rights #AI #robot