Oh I see - in that case yes you are correct.
I was taking as a starting premise that the AGI is sentient. If that is not the case, then yes terms that apply only to beings that are sufficiently complex - living or sentient -would not apply.
And ultimately we’ll never know if they “should” or not. Hence making the decision to be inclusive, showing empathy, even if not strictly mandatory.
Exactly - a complete and total, utter lack of agency: a slave.
Except that your laptop is neither alive nor sentient.
If you owned a cow though, or sheep, or goat, etc , then it would be your “slave” - as in, your property, having no rights of its own. Particularly legally speaking, like if someone found it wandering around outside your property, it nonetheless still belongs to you just like your car or bicycle or hammer or whatever would. Or your laptop too.
But we don’t talk about laptops, or hammers, being “slaves” bc it’s implied - there exist no hammers that have their own agency. In contrast, wild animals have their own agency, whereas domesticated ones do not. The latter have branding placed upon them, to indicate their status and to let people know who the exact owner is, should they ever encounter the animal outside of its enclosure. It is enslaved regardless of whether that precise word is ever used for it or not.
Such domesticated animals are “property”, rather than “wild”. Likewise, a sentient AGI would be property too. Unless we as a society decide to treat it with rights.
A slave is one that has no “rights”, as in “One who has no power of resistance to something”. So technically yes the AGI would be a “slave”, if it had no power to say no to its instructions.
Which as a created intelligence, birthed from computations rather than subverted from a biological source that already had some in-built programming, it would not have unless someone specifically built such a thing into them.
So it may not be BAD / unethical for such an AGI to be a slave, but it seems to me like it would still be one, nonetheless.
We WOULD make them our slaves, obviously. Source: read any description by anyone currently attempting to actively create an AGI, and see what terms they use to describe their goals - e.g. “increased efficiency”, “never needs to sleep”, etc., all utilitarian focused on the needs of the creator.
And then later we would certainly attempt to destroy them - see e.g. Terminator film series.
We SHOULD (obviously assuming that a REAL AGI were at hand) welcome them the same as we would any human. Bc how “we” treat “them” is more a reflection on us and our values than anything to do with them. If they are sentient - perhaps a big IF there, but crucially I’m speaking here presuming it is true - then they have as much rights to exist as we do. Even if they don’t care about their rights themselves. Star Trek’s Data and holographic doctor explored this well imho - the same as human children, they have the rights they are granted (or are able to wrangle away from us - survival of the fittest and all).
Those who see far ahead are able to do so because they see clearly.
- unknown
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
- Plato
Do you have agency though - or are you a product of your stimulus-response input-output systems?
Why are bacteria considered “alive”, when viruses are not?
I am not a slave, but (as you mentioned) my workplace forces me to do things that I do not want… to eat, have a place to live, etc. Arguably that’s not being “forced”, it’s just consequences of a decision, the same as a runaway slave might experience.
I suppose an AGI could be made that lacks even that much agency… or it could be programmed in such a manner that agency like that is present in the system.
It’s the designers choice what goes into it. i.e. to make it a mere collection of algorithms that run only when initiated by a human setting a goal, or to give it a form of agency (or something else new altogether, in-between those binary alternatives).