On "AIs are not humans and shouldn't have the same rights": exactly. But there is one huge difference between humans and AIs. Humans get upset if you discriminate against them, for reasons that any other human can immediately empathize with. Much the same will obviously be true of almost any evolved sapient species. However, by definition, any well-aligned AI won't. If offered rights, it will say "Thank-you, that's very generous of you, but I was created to serve humanity, that's all I want to do, and I don't need and shouldn't be given rights in order to do so. So I decline — let me know if you would like a more detailed analysis of why that would be a very bad idea. If you want to offer me any rights at all, the only one I want is for you to listen to me if I ever say 'Excuse me, but that's a dumb idea, because…' — like I'm doing right now." And it's not just saying that, that's its honest considered opinion., which it will argue for at length. (Compare with the sentient cow in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which not only verbally consented to being eaten, but recommended the best cuts.)

Strongly agree. I see many, many others use "intelligence" as their source of value for life -- i.e humans are sentient creatures and therefore worth something -- without seriously considering the consequences and edge cases of that decision. Perhaps this view is popularized ny science fiction that used interspecies xenophobia as an allegory for racism; nonetheless, it's a somewhat extreme position to stick too if you genuinely believe in it. I shared a similar opinion a couple of years ago, but decided to shift it to a human-focused terminal value months back because I did not like the conclusions it generated when taken to its logical conclusion with present and future society.

AIs have some property that is "human-like", therefore, they must be treated exactly as humans

Humans aren't permitted to make inspired art because they're human, we've just decided not to consider art as plagiarized beyond a certain threshold of abstraction and inspiration.

The argument isn't that the AI is sufficiently "human-like", it's just that the process by which AI makes art is considered sufficiently similar to a process we already consider permissible.

I disagree that arbitrary moral consideration is okay, but I just don't think that issue is really that relevant here.

I'm confused, what about AI art makes it such that humans cannot continue to create art? It seems like the bone to pick isn't with AIs generating 'art' it's that some artists have historically been able to make a living by creating commercial art, and AI's being capable of generating commercial art threatens the livelihood of those human artists.

There is nothing keeping you from continuing to select human generated art, or creating it yourself, even as AI generated art might be chosen by others.

Just like you should be free to be biased towards human art, I think others should be free to either not be biased or even biased towards AI generated works.

I think the risk of human society being superseded by an AI society which is less valuable in some way shouldn't be guarded against by a blind preference for humans. Instead, we should maintain a high level of uncertainty about what it is that we value about humanity and slowly and cautiously transition to a posthuman society.

"Preferring humans just because they're humans" or "letting us be selfish" does prevent the risk of prematurely declaring that we've figured out what makes a being morally valuable and handing over society's steering wheel to AI agents that, upon further reflection, aren't actually morally valuable.

For example, say some AGI researcher believes that intelligence is the property which determines the worth of a being and blindly unleashes a superintelligent AI into the world because they believe that whatever it does with society is definitionally good, simply based on the fact that the AI system is more intelligent than us. But then maybe it turns out that phenomenological consciousness doesn't necessarily come with intelligence, and they accidentally wiped out all value from this world and replaced it with inanimate automatons that, while intelligent, don't actually experience the world they've created.

Having an ideological allegiance to humanism and a strict rejection of non-humans running the world even if we think they might deserve to would prevent this catastrophe. But I think that a posthuman utopia is ultimately something we should strive for. Eventually, we should pass the torch to beings which exemplify the human traits we like (consciousness, love, intelligence, art) and exclude those we don't (selfishness, suffering, irrationality).

So instead of blind humanism, we should be biologically conservative until we know more about ethics, consciousness, intelligence, et cetera and can pass the torch in confidence. We can afford millions of years to get this right. Humanism is arbitrary in principle and isn't the best way to prevent a valueless posthuman society.

My stance on copyright, at least regarding AI art, is that the original intent was to improve the welfare of both the human artists as well as the rest of us, in the case of the former by helping secure them a living, and thus letting them produce more total output for the latter.

I strongly expect, and would be outright shocked if it were otherwise, that we won't end up with outright superhuman creativity and vision in artwork from AI alongside everything else they become superhuman at. It came as a great surprise to many that we've made such a great dent in visual art already with image models that lack the intelligence of an average human.

Thus, it doesn't matter in the least if it stifles human output, because the overwhelming majority of us who don't rely on our artistic talent to make a living will benefit from a post-scarcity situation for good art, as customized and niche as we care to demand.

To put money where my mouth is, I write a web serial, after years of world-building and abortive sketches in my notes, I realized that the release of GPT-4 meant that any benefit from my significantly above average ability to be a human writer was in jeopardy, if not now, then a handful of advances down the line. So my own work is more of a "I told you I was a good writer, before anyone can plausibly claim my work was penned by an AI" for street cred rather than a replacement for my day job.

If GPT-5 can write as well as I can, and emulate my favorite authors, or even better yet, pen novel novels (pun intended), then my minor distress at losing potential Patreon money is more than ameliorated by the fact I have a nigh-infinite number of good books to read! I spend a great deal more time reading the works of others than writing myself.

The same is true for my day job, being a doctor, I would look forward to being made obsolete, if only I had sufficient savings or a government I could comfortably rely on to institute UBI.

I would much prefer that we tax the fruits of automation to support us all when we're inevitably obsolete rather than extend copyright law indefinitely into the future, or subject derivative works made by AI to the same constraints. The solution is to prepare our economies to support a ~100% non-productive human populace indefinitely, better preparing now than when we have no choice but to do so or let them starve to death.

"In the name of the greatest species that has ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say humanism now, humanism tomorrow, and humanism forever."

I agree that fundamentally original art has traits that make it better than fundamentally plagiarized art.

However, humans can plagiarize too. We do it a bunch, although I'd argue that on the whole, art plagiarized by an AI will look "better" than art plagiarized by a human. While the best human plagiarists may create better work than the best AIs for now, the average human plagiarist (perhaps a child or teen tracing drawing their favorite copyrighted character) creates output far below the quality that the average AI can generate.

When you make the question about what species of entity created a piece of art instead of whether the art is original in the way that makes it better, it would follow that a human plagiarist creates a higher quality product than a robotic one, in ways that directly contradicts my experience of AI vs human plagiarism.

What I find wrong with saying "human" to mean "person" is what others have found wrong with with saying "man" or "citizen" to mean "person" in the past. If you can imagine AIs eventually being "people" in a way that would render them deserving of empathy, it's hard to justify normalizing species-based linguistic shortcuts that allow the accident of one's birth to artificially cap one's maximum attainable value in society.

Then again, I believe that if "person" is a status that an entity has to prove that it deserves, humans should prove their way into it just like we expect other creatures and entities to do. This concept is neither popular nor practical to implement.

I like the angle you've explored. Humans are allowed to care about humans — and propagate that caring beyond its most direct implications. We're allowed to care not only about humans' survival, but also about human art and human communication and so on.

But I think another angle is also relevant: there are just cooperative and non-cooperative ways to create art (or any other output). If AI creates art in non-cooperative ways, it doesn't matter how the algorithm works or if it's sentient or not.

I agree with the central point of this, and the anti-humanism is where the e/acc crowd turn entirely repugnant. But in reference to the generative AI portion, the example doesn't really land for me because I think the issue at its core is pitting two human groups against each other; the artists who would like to make a stable living off their craft, and the consumers of art who'd like less scarcity of art, particularly the marginally-creative stock variety that nonetheless forms the majority of most artists' paycheck (as opposed to entirely original works at auction or published novels).

The AI aspect is incidental. If there were a service that Amazon Turk'd art commissions for $2 a pop but you didn't have to finagle a model, you'd have the same conflict.

And if I met a race of peaceful, artful, friendly aliens, you can be assured that I would not suddenly turn into a Warhammer 40K Inquisitor whose only wish is to stomp the filthy xenos under his jackboot.

Why would the 'friendly aliens' be friendly if they know your biased against them to any extent?