Forums of the Megaverse®

The Artist Formerly wrote:Something to consider for all sides. Western world laws (IE US law) works really differently in the HU world, as they relate to the various super humans. From Villains Unlimited and Gramercy Island, we know that super human suspects and criminals can be denied access to legal consul, and certain trial rights. From Aliens Un's write up on SHOCK, the threat thresh hold for super humans is much higher before being able to claim self-defense (SHOCK goons can shoot at you, but so long as they can prove they were just shooting near you, they're still on solid legal ground). And we can see enough concern for super human civil rights that the group the Jury had to take things into their own hand to make sure that heroes who lose it or go rouge are dealt with where normal human laws don't apply.

eliakon wrote:I just thought this might be worth a mention in this thread...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sa ... spartanntp

Spoiler:

Sophia, an intelligent humanoid robot, has been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia. It’s the first country in the world to give a bot the same status reserved for humans.
Sophia was awarded the citizenship while on stage at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh.
“I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” Sophia told the audience during her presentation, which was moderated by CNBC Squawk Box co-anchor and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”
The robot was created by David Hanson, the founder of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, who is known for creating robots that look and act like humans. Sophia was created to look like Audrey Hepburn.
While on stage, Sophia made light of the concerns among some that AI robots could be an existential threat to humans. At one point, she made fun of tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has repeatedly warned that AI could be a threat to humans.

While this grant may have been a publicity stunt and a gimmick...
...it still happened.
Which means that there is now a legal precedent for at least the concept of AI rights since there is now an AI (AI comes on a sliding scale, while it is not full human level intelligence it is still AI) that IS legally a citizen. And therefor has rights.

Just an interesting thought. (And yes, I know this is in our world in 2017 and not the HU world... but if the cruder AIs of our world can get this done then imagine what the more advanced ones of HU could do. Or if this had happened earlier... or...)

Zer0 Kay wrote:

Stone Gargoyle wrote:It would definitely be something I would address in-game. One side would argue against it since it is easier to control and combat aliens if you don't give them equal rights. The other would argue that they should have equal rights as sentient species. There would always be those arguing that aliens cannot be considered sentient, and so on and so forth.

As far as arguing sentience. If an alien is able to communicate concepts and argue that they have the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively, which is a definition of sentience, in an age where that definition is accepted then one can not argue one is going on in another's head. They can deny it but they can not make a resonable argument against it.