In this work we challenge arguments for robot rights on metaphysical, ethical and legal grounds. Metaphysically, we argue that machines are not the kinds of things that may be denied or granted rights. Building on theories of phenomenology and post-Cartesian approaches to cognitive science, we ground our position in the lived reality of actual humans in an increasingly ubiquitously connected, controlled, digitized, and surveilled society. Ethically, we argue that, given machines current and potential harms to the most marginalized in society, limits on (rather than rights for) machines should be at the centre of current AI ethics debate. From a legal perspective, the best analogy to robot rights is not human rights but corporate rights, a highly controversial concept whose most important effect has been the undermining of worker, consumer, and voter rights by advancing the power of capital to exercise outsized influence on politics and law. The idea of robot rights, we conclude, acts as a smoke screen, allowing theorists and futurists to fantasize about benevolently sentient machines with unalterable needs and desires protected by law. While such fantasies have motivated fascinating fiction and art, once they influence legal theory and practice articulating the scope of rights claims, they threaten to immunize from legal accountability the current AI and robotics that is fuelling surveillance capitalism, accelerating environmental destruction, and entrenching injustice and human suffering.

翻译：本研究从形而上学、伦理与法律三个维度系统反驳机器人权利主张。在形而上学层面，我们认为机器本质上不属于可被赋予或剥夺权利之存在。基于现象学理论与后笛卡尔认知科学路径，我们将立场扎根于日益普遍互联、受控、数字化与监控化社会中真实人类的生活现实。在伦理层面，我们主张鉴于机器对最边缘化群体已造成及潜在的社会危害，当前人工智能伦理辩论的核心应聚焦于对机器的限制（而非赋予其权利）。从法律视角看，机器人权利的最佳类比并非人权，而是公司法人权利——这一极具争议的概念，其最显著的效应是通过扩大资本对政治与法律施加过度影响的能力，削弱了劳动者、消费者及选民的权利。我们得出结论：机器人权利概念实质上是烟幕弹，让理论家与未来主义者得以幻想具有不可改变需求与欲望、受法律保护的善意感知机器。此类幻想虽催生了精彩的文学艺术创作，但一旦渗透至界定权利主张范围的法律理论与实践，便可能使当前推动监控资本主义、加速环境破坏、固化不公与人类苦难的人工智能及机器人系统免于法律问责。