“So you get into this uncomfortable position where you might be forced to recognize that some humans are non-persons and some nonhumans are persons.”

“Now again, if you bite the bullet and say I’m willing to be a specialist, being a member of the human species is either necessary or sufficient for being a person, you avoid this problem entirely. But if not you at least have to be open to the possibility that artificial intelligence in particular may at one point become person like and have the rights of persons.”

Susan Schneider

Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania

“I think a lot of people dismiss this kind of talk of super intelligence as science fiction…”

 “…because we’re stuck in this sort of carbon chauvinism idea that intelligence can only exist in biological organisms made of cells and carbon atoms. As a physicist, from my perspective intelligence is just a kind of information processing preformed by elementary particles moving around according to the laws of physics. And there’s absolutely no law in physics that says you can’t do that in ways that are much more intelligent than humans.”

Max Tegmark

Physicist

“If we create intelligence, […] unless we program it with the goal of subjugating less intelligent beings, there’s no reason to think that it will naturally evolve in that direction.”

“Particularly if, like with every gadget that we invent, we build in safeguards. And we know, by the way, that it’s possible to have high intelligence without megalomaniacal or homicidal or genocidal tendencies because we do know that there is a highly advanced form of intelligence that tends not to have that desire and they’re called women.”

Steven Pinker

Professor of Psychology, Harvard University