Because the whole point of building these things is to make our lives easier. If we have to take care of them as if they were human beings, then they are not worth building. We already have humans. Roughly speaking, I want robots that will do stuff that people normally don't like doing, 24/7 with no holidays or days off. If we have to give robots days off and otherwise treat them as equals because they are counted as persons, then why on earth do we need them? Biosupremacy all the way.
I think when people worry aloud about hostile AI they're really projecting the attitude you have here - I got here first, so I don't care about whatever sentient individual arrived later. Historically, this has not proved to be a sustainable position, as eventually enslaved populations come to the realization that they have little incentive to cooperate in their own enslavement.
> Historically, this has not proved to be a sustainable position
That's true, but it doesn't take into account the fact that in this hypothetical case we are in complete control of their sentience. If we can program them to never ever rebel, we should. If we can't, then we shouldn't create them in the first place.
I personally think that sentience (and thus maximal interpersonal utility) is only possible to the extent that it's possible to anticipate someone else's desire by modeling it in terms of one's own. The degree to which I can imagine what you want depends on the ability to imagine myself in your position, and once that happens there's always the possibility that I might find occupying your position to be more desirable than remaining in my own.
I built my children out of whatever my wife was eating + a bit of material on my part.
How something came into existence shouldn't determine if its intelligence deserves protecting. Creating intelligent machines and torturing them, for instance, should definitely be a criminal act.
And if brain scanning/emulation catches up enough, then what? It's OK to torture a non-human intelligence if the source wasn't a brain scan? What if we start building our own out of composites or scratch?
Intelligence/capacity for suffering should be the deciding factor here. (And hopefully they'll breed more stupid animals for meat, until it's feasible to grow meat directly.)
Desks and tables are not, as far as I know, sentient.
Why is it relevant whether they were created from sand and metal by bald apes, or from carbon and water by the autonomous processes that happen in a bald ape's crotch?
> Why is it relevant whether they were created from sand and metal by bald apes, or from carbon and water by the autonomous processes that happen in a bald ape's crotch?
It's not. The point is, we build them to serve us, otherwise they are not needed. I don't care if they're sentient or not, their purpose is to serve humanity.
No, just destroy it and avoid further problems. There is no point in creating artificial beings with the goal of "living". Normal flesh-and-blood people are pretty good at that, there is an abundance of them and we keep making more. We're facing more and more problems and we need AI research to solve them, not create new ones.
I disagree with your sentiment, but I'll upvote you because I think we need to be honest with ourselves that, for some subset of humans, this is very much the reasoning going on.
I'm not in favor of creating sentient machines, specifically because the tendency will be to use them as slaves.
How would that even be possible when constructing an AGI? Sure, we could instill them with a set of ethical guidelines that would require subservience, but, like human ethical guidelines, they could be broken or changed based on the situation.
My personal philosophy is that I will only entertain the question of personhood with any entity which is able, or may become able, to pose that question in the first place.
If there were a real, sentient robot, I would be more than willing to extend such rights.