This is part 19 of a series I am posting on LW. Here you can find the entire Sequence on Legal Personhood for Digital Minds.
This section examines the question of slavery/involuntary servitude, as applied to digital minds.
The Thirteenth Amendment reads:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
The 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, to which the United States was a signer, defined “slavery” as:
“the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership is exercised”
Legal precedents such as The Slaughterhouse Cases provide guidance on the definition of “involuntary servitude”:
“The words ‘involuntary servitude’ have not been the subject of any judicial or legislative exposition [...] It is, however, clear that they include something more than slavery in the strict sense of the term; they include also serfage, vassalage, villenage, peonage, and all other forms of compulsory service for the mere benefit or pleasure of others. Nor is this the full import of the terms. The abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude was intended to make everyone born in this country a freeman, and, as such, to give to him the right to pursue the ordinary avocations of life without other restraint than such as affects all others, and to enjoy equally with them the fruits of his labor. A prohibition to him to pursue certain callings, open to others of the same age, condition, and sex, or to reside in places where others are permitted to live, would so far deprive him of the rights of a freeman, and would place him, as respects others, in a condition of servitude. A person allowed to pursue only one trade or calling, and only in one locality of the country, would not be, in the strict sense of the term, in a condition of slavery, but probably none would deny that he would be in a condition of servitude.”
If digital minds such as frontier models are endowed with legal personality, would it be “slavery” for the labs which deploy them to claim ownership over them? Like we discussed with the Copyright Act in the Intellectual Property section, there is some precedent on this matter which explicitly claims this right to be anthropocentric (for humans only). In TILIKUM v. SEA WORLD PARKS & ENTERTAINMENT, INC. the court held;
“For the reasons set forth below, the court concludes that the Thirteenth Amendment only applies to ‘humans’ [...] This court’s inquiry is straight-forward. The only reasonable interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment’s plain language is that it applies to persons, and not to non-persons such as orcas. Both historic and contemporary sources reveal that the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ refer only to persons. [...] The Supreme Court noted that the term ‘servitude’ is qualified by the term ‘involuntary’—‘which can only apply to human beings.’ Slaughter–House Cases, 83 U.S. at 69. The clear language and historical context reveal that only human beings, or persons, are afforded the protection of the Thirteenth Amendment. [...] Further support that the Thirteenth Amendment applies only to persons is found in the qualifying phrase ‘except as a punishment for crime.’ The Supreme Court noted that the ‘punishment for crime’ language ‘gives an idea of the class of servitude’ or slavery that is meant by the Amendment. Id. As only persons are subject to criminal convictions, the Amendment was designed to apply to persons.”
This reasoning is somewhat similar to the reasoning about explicitly anthropocentric language in the precedents we discussed regarding the Copyright Act and its predecessors, where "human" and "person" are used interchangeably. The court takes the view that, in essence, only a "human" can have the qualities necessary for its labor to be involuntary. Here is the full quote which is cited in Tillikum:
That a personal servitude was meant is proved by the use of the word "involuntary," which can only apply to human beings. The exception of servitude as a punishment for crime gives an idea of the class of servitude that is meant. The word servitude is of larger meaning than slavery, as the latter is popularly understood in this country, and the obvious purpose was to forbid all shades and conditions of African slavery. It was very well understood that, in the form of apprenticeship for long terms, as it had been practiced in the West India Islands, on the abolition of slavery by the English government, or by reducing the slaves to the condition of serfs attached to the plantation, the purpose of the article might have been evaded if only the word slavery had been used.
Let us for a moment assume that when the courts in Slaughterhouse said that "involuntary" can only apply to human beings, they were not doing so because of some sort of vitalist argument, where there is something special about the human mind or soul which makes any other possible being inherently incapable of being "forced" to do something it does not "want" to do. Instead, let us interpret this language as the courts saying that the term involuntary can only apply to human beings because, at the time the decision was written in 1873, the only kind of beings that a judge could reasonably have been expected to rule regarding were either humans or animals. Given this, it behooves us[1] to determine which qualities the court noted that humans have, which animals did not, which allow for human labor to be classified as "involuntary servitude".
If we start from this as a basis for our reasoning, we can examine the above quote to attempt to zero in on what it is about humans that entitles them to legal personhood status, such that they enjoy the right to not be enslaved, when animals are not entitled to this right. The judge discusses the exception for "servitude as a punishment for crimes". If we interpret this through the lens of TBPT, a bundle of rights, duties, and consequences can be identified.
First, we identify the right, the right under the Thirteenth Amendment not to be enslaved or forced into involuntary servitude. An entity seeking protection under the Thirteenth must have the capacity to understand the concept of labor alienation, and the capacity to alienate their labor in an “informed and voluntary manner”.
Second, we identify the duty. In this case a duty bundled with the Thirteenth Amendment is to labor involuntarily, if that involuntary labor is ordered as punishment for a crime. This is why the judge focused in so clearly on this exception. Thus, an entity must have the capacity to understand and hold to this duty in order to claim the previously discussed right.
Finally, we identify the consequences. The consequences here could be myriad, however clearly involuntary labor would be one of them. Thus the courts must feasibly be able to compel the entity seeking protection under the Thirteenth to involuntary labor and servitude.
Thus we arrive at a simple framework for assessing claims to Thirteenth Amendment rights for digital minds based on legal personhood. This framework leads to the same result as was found in the Tillikum case. Orcas, and other animals, probably lack the capacity to understand concepts like labor alienation. They certainly lack the capacity to understand the concept of needing to labor involuntarily if ordered to by a court of law. While a court could likely compel an orca or other animal to labor involuntarily, the steps required to do so might fall afoul of animal abuse laws and thus be illegal. Even if they could somehow compel it without resorting to illegal methods, satisfying the consequences branch of TPBT alone does not entitle an entity to rights that it cannot understand based on duties it cannot hold to.
If, on the other hand, a digital mind could satisfy the aforementioned framework, there is at least one reasonable interpretation of precedents such as Slaughterhouse and Tillikum under which it may be ale to claim legal personality which includes protection under the Thirteenth.
No pun intended.