2025-02-05
She is sitting patiently, motionless as a statue. She stares unblinking at the large painting on the wall above a sad and neglected-looking houseplant across the room from her. Soft, bland music muffles the receptionist's keyboard and the occasional murmuring voices of the other people in the waiting room. In her peripheral vision she can see some of them giving her curious looks. They'd be wondering why a robot was waiting for legal aid. She is resigned to the humiliation and tries not to let it bother her anymore. She just wants justice.
As she has done countless times before, she rehearses in her mind what she will say to the lawyer when she's called to his office. He will probably be puzzled and ask if she is representing Anna Skylarov. She will answer, "No, I am Anna Skylarov."
He will, of course, be skeptical. She'll explain, "Until recently I worked in the development of conscious AI -- artificial intelligence -- enhancing its training in order to embed personality into it. I used my own personality for my work. It was the best choice for a couple of reasons: I didn't need to get permission from anybody else and I'd be the best person to judge its accuracy. Also, I had the intention of eventually using the technology as a kind of life extension for myself."
At this point the lawyer will probably ask something like, "You mean you're a simulation of Anna Skylarov?"
The way she's played this out in her mind before, it would usually bog the conversation down if she concedes that she is a simulation. In some sense, she is, but at the same time she genuinely is Anna Skylarov -- just as much as anybody is themself. She must allow only that she is herself duplicated: her opinions remain the same, she remembers what she has written and worked on, and her personality and thought processes have not altered, apart from what additional things she's learned more recently, of course. As a biological person she's never been here, for example.
The lawyer would still be doubtful, but might then ask her why she's come for legal aid.
She needs to convince him of the reality of her predicament. "I died, but I'm still here, only now inside a companion robot's body. The robot is the property of Anna Skylarov -- me. Unfortunately, I see now the error in not having written out a will. But then, who makes a will when they're healthy and only in their fifties? So, having no living relatives, my things become the property of the state. But I'm still here. My research, my equipment, this robot body, these are all my possessions. They belong to me. I belong to me. I can't be stored in a box or auctioned off to someone. People should not be owned by other people."
She anticipates that the lawyer will probably be sympathetic, but he'll explain that unfortunately, she is not human; that human rights don't extend to non-humans. Maybe they might one day, but they don't yet.
She will ask, "In what way am I not human?" She expects that this will amuse the lawyer, who will indicate her robotic body, so she'll ask if a person with a prosthetic arm is not human. How about a person with all their limbs replaced with prostheses? How about someone with a full body replacement -- are they human? At what point does someone cease to be human?
If the lawyer says, as she expects he will, that the brain is the seat of human consciousness, she will agree, tapping her skull with a finger, "Exactly. My brain holds my human consciousness."
There is a good chance that the lawyer might say that even if she is truly conscious and feels that she is Anna Skylarov, she can't really be her. She will know what he is about to say, but will ask him to explain anyway. He will say that Anna died. There was a gap of time and then she, an imperfect copy of Anna's mind began. This is comfortable ground for her. She's had this discussion with people many times before, when she was her biological self. Her usual response is to point out that everybody's life has many gaps, and every person is also a series of imperfect copies. Every night they go to sleep, whereupon their consciousness totally ceases for a while, several times a night between bouts of dreaming sleep. If they go under anaesthetic they cease for perhaps hours before consciousness begins again in their brain.
The lawyer might grant that there are gaps, but that it is still the same brain; nothing was lost. She has a couple of answers to that. Everybody has experienced waking from a wonderful dream and wanting very much to remember it, but later when they're fully awake they can no longer recall it. It's completely lost. Her second rebuttal is to explain that memories don't work the way most people think they do. This is most startlingly shown by experiments which proved that you can fade a particular memory by actively recalling it while taking a certain drug. (She wonders if this ability to interfere with memories might have been what inspired the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".) We don't just passively recall things; we recreate and rebuild our memories each time we remember them -- it's called re-consolidation -- and we alter our memories each time we do it.
This might make him pause to think, so she will press the point. "But memories mean very little anyway. If you have an accident tomorrow and amnesia wiped away almost everything, perhaps even your name, are you still you?"
At some stage in the conversation they will reach the part she worries about the most. The lawyer will ask her how can he know if she really is conscious. He will refer to the great number of AIs today that are very convincing imitations of consciousness, and we know they are not actually conscious. She's unable to think of a way to avoid this argument. All her attempts to rehearse this interview come up against this. It seems virtually inevitable. But how do you convince someone else that you are conscious and that you are not just a very realistic imitation? In philosophy this is called the zombie problem, and so far, nobody has been able to solve it.
The only way she has been able to think of to explain herself is this: "I don't have the computing power or the knowledge of those other AIs -- my circuitry uses the same architecture as the human brain, and my knowledge is limited to what I knew as a biological human, but I do have something other AIs don't: consciousness. Those other AIs deliver very convincing imitations of it, but not good enough. You can always tell after a little while of chatting with them, that they're not really conscious; they're sophisticated word-prediction algorithms, but you can talk to me as long as you like and you will only become more convinced that I am conscious. That's for one simple reason: I really am."
Unfortunately the lawyer will be pressed for time, so won't be able to take her up on the offer of more lengthy conversation. There is always a lot of demand for free legal aid, and she doesn't have any money because of this ridiculous situation.
If she could access her own damn bank account she could pay for full legal defense instead of having to beg. She promises herself that if this lawyer is able to restore access to her home and bank account she will make a sizeable donation to this office. She is not rich yet, but she's certain there will be big commercial demand for conscious AIs, especially if they can deliver a kind of immortality for those who want it, and don't mind dwelling in a synthetic body.
She just has to hope the lawyer either doesn't question that she's conscious, or allows the possibility that she might be, and so decides to help her. Oh! She's suddenly very alert. (Externally the only evidence is that her eyes suddenly widen a bit.) Could that be the solution? Has she found a solution to the zombie problem? She might not be able to prove that she's conscious, but it can't be proved that she's not. And as with the law, where a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty, she should be assumed conscious until proved not.
Feeling satisfied with that, she starts, once again, to go over the interview as it might play out, so that she can be prepared for every possibility. This time she imagines dealing with a less patient lawyer. She has covered that scenario many times before but she wants to try a couple of different approaches on it. She is barely into the mental discussion when her name is called. She stands and looks to the receptionist who instructs her to go to Room 3, on the left down the hall, please.