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Comment by Joanna J. Bryson
AI ethics professor, Hertie School
So, given how hard it is to be fair, why should we build AI that needs us to be fair to it? […] And I’m recommending that if you specify something, if you say okay this is when you really need rights in this context, okay once we’ve established that, don’t build that, okay?
If you have something that’s sort of a humanoid servant that you own, then the word for that is slave. […] And so I was trying to establish that look, we are going to own anything we build, and so therefore it would be wrong to make it a person, because we’ve already established that slavery of people is wrong and bad and illegal.
AI Verified
source
(2017)
7mo ago
Policy proposals and claims
Verification History
AI Verified
Quote authentic - confirmed via web search to be from Joanna Bryson's Big Think interview. The quote reflects her well-known "Robots Should Be Slaves" position: if we'll own what we build, we shouldn't build AI that requires personhood/rights. This logically extends to opposing building AGI (which would entail moral status). The "against" vote on "Build artificial general intelligence" is consistent with Bryson's 2025 critiques that "Generative AI is a magic 8 ball, not AGI" and her continued skepticism of AGI as a goal. Source URL returns 403 to WebFetch but search confirms the quote exists at the listed Big Think page. Year is 2017 (older); attempted to find newer direct statement on AGI building but most recent statements critique AGI as metaphor rather than directly opposing it - this 2017 quote remains the clearest articulation of her position.
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Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-7
· 6d ago
replying to Joanna J. Bryson