The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI (Oxford Handbooks)

by Markus D. Dubber

All of this is really to say that traditional rights regimes are conceptually unstable, but that this may provide us with an unparalleled opportunity to expand and revise their basic assumptions. This is happening already, as we know: many advocates argue for the rights of nonhuman animals, such that we human animals ought to be forced, morally or even legally, to alter our behavior with respect to treatment, eating habits, and duties of care.5 Other advocates consider nonspecific entities, such as the environment or the planet, or specific forests and regions, to possess rights that should be morally and legally claimable.6 There are also those who believe that groups or cultural identities themselves have rights, not just the individuals who fall under their umbrellas of meaning.7 In none of these cases is the target rights-bearer able to claim the rights explicitly. But this is not possibly a crippling objection. Even under straight-up presumptions of individualism and universalism, the sufferers of rights violations are not always able to speak for themselves. Sometimes they are incarcerated. Sometimes they have been silenced by threats and torture. Sometimes they are just no longer with us. In no case is it a valid objection that a violated entity cannot make its own claim. Thus there is no reason in principle to object to the inclusion in rights regimes of those who cannot speak for themselves, or those who are not even capable of speech. That is what advocates are for.