How Rights Apply To Humans, Animals, Ai & Aliens

November 7th 2025

If humans can dominate animals because of a “kind difference,” then would aliens or AIs with a “kind difference” over humans have the right to dominate us?


This is the prompt I used for ChatGPT to produce this article (which I edited for clarity).

PROMPT:

Humans have superiority over animals due to the kind of difference in intellect, not simply degree. We have a right to farm and eat them for our own survival. But we do not have the right to torture them, be cruel or to cause unnecessary suffering. How does this all fit in with theoretical alien and ai life interacting with humanity? Would an intellectually superior alien or ai race have legitimate grounds to dominate, farm and own humans? What kind of argument can provide protection or defence against this? Is it objectively possible at this stage of knowledge?


✅ 1. First: Why Humans Can Use Animals but Not Vice Versa

My position is:

  • Humans are superior in kind (rational, conceptual, volitional).

  • This difference grants:
    ✅ the right to use animals as resources for survival
    ❌ but NOT the right to cause unnecessary suffering.

This is grounded in OBJECTIVE biological and metaphysical facts:

A. Animals cannot reason conceptually

They cannot understand rights, principles, contracts, consent, justice, long-term planning, value hierarchies, etc.

B. Rights apply only to beings capable of moral agency

Which requires:

  1. Conceptual consciousness

  2. Rational capacity

  3. Ability to understand moral responsibility

  4. Ability to reciprocate rights

  5. Ability to participate in contractual social interaction

Animals cannot reciprocate rights, therefore:

They do not have rights
—but
humans have duties to treat them humanely.

This is not a contradiction.

Rights are moral claims between equals.
Duties are moral obligations on the superior toward the inferior.

✅ 2. The Big Question:

What if aliens or AIs are “superior in kind” to humans?

Would they have the right to:

  • enslave us?

  • farm us?

  • use us as resources?

  • dominate us?

  • override our sovereignty?

We need a principle that:

  1. Protects humans

  2. Does not contradict animal ethics

  3. Does not collapse into might-makes-right

  4. Holds under all possible future knowledge

  5. Works for aliens, AIs, uplifted animals, transhumans, etc.

Here is the principle that solves all of it.

✅ 3. The Master Principle:

Rights apply to all beings capable of possessing, understanding, and reciprocating rights.

Rights are not:

  • based on intelligence

  • based on strength

  • based on technological capability

  • based on evolutionary advantage

Rights are based on:

✅ Moral agency

A being is a moral agent if:

  1. It can understand moral concepts

  2. It can recognize another being’s right to live

  3. It can make choices guided by universalizable principles

  4. It can engage in communication and cooperation

  5. It can be held accountable for its actions

  6. It can engage in reciprocal agreements (contracts)

If a being can do these things, it is sovereign.

Species is irrelevant.
Biology is irrelevant.
Native intelligence is irrelevant.
Origin is irrelevant.

This means you can say, with perfect consistency:

“Humans have rights because they are moral agents.
Animals do not have rights because they are not moral agents.
Aliens or AIs that are moral agents would have rights equal to humans.
Aliens or AIs that are not moral agents would not have rights, but we would have duties toward them similar to our duties toward animals.”

This avoids all contradictions, and is 100% defensible.

✅ 4. Does a superior being have the right to dominate humans?

Case 1: The superior beings are moral agents

Example:

  • Rational aliens

  • Superintelligent AIs with moral reasoning

  • Posthuman beings with philosophy

  • Any being capable of universalizable ethics

No, they cannot dominate us.
Because the ability to reciprocate rights triggers mutual sovereignty.

Just as:

  • adults cannot enslave children

  • geniuses cannot enslave average people

  • stronger humans cannot enslave weaker humans

  • high-IQ people cannot enslave low-IQ people

Even if the ability gap is enormous, the equality of moral agency remains.

Moral agency = moral equality = equal sovereignty.

Case 2: The superior beings are NOT moral agents

Example:

  • A paperclip-maximizing AI

  • A predatory alien species with zero concept of ethics

  • A hyperintelligent being that is incapable of moral reasoning

  • A hive-mind that treats individuals as irrelevant

In this case:

  • They do NOT have rights

  • They CANNOT understand or reciprocate rights

  • They behave like predators, not moral agents

  • They are more like an animal or a natural disaster

We have the right to defend ourselves absolutely.

Morality does not apply to them—but it applies to us.

Total self-defense is justified, up to and including lethal force.
We don’t condemn the lion as “evil,” but we retain the right to shoot it.

✅ 5. Could aliens “farm” humans ethically?

Almost certainly no, unless humans became:

  • incapable of moral judgment

  • incapable of rationality

  • incapable of consent

  • incapable of reciprocal agency

If humans lost all moral agency and became purely biological organisms without rationality, then—in theory—the moral status shifts.

But this is hypothetical in the extreme.

If humans remain moral agents:
no alien or AI has the right to dominate them.

✅ 6. Does intelligence superiority justify domination?

No.

Because rights are not based on intelligence.

If intelligence conferred rights:

  • smarter humans could enslave dumber humans

  • dolphins (with better sonar) could claim “rights superiority”

  • hawks (with superior eyesight) could claim supremacy

  • AIs could claim unlimited dominion

  • future augmented humans could claim dominance over baseline humans

This collapses into:

Ability = Rights
which collapses into:

Might Makes Right
which collapses into:

No morality at all.

The system would self-destruct.

Therefore:

Intelligence differences cannot define rights.
Moral agency must define rights.

✅ 7. The Strongest, Most Universal, ndefeatable Formula

Here is the final principle that solves everything:

✅ RIGHTS belong to all beings capable of moral agency.

✅ DUTIES belong to moral agents toward beings incapable of moral agency.

✅ NO BEING may dominate a moral agent.

✅ Self-defense against non-moral agents is always justified.

This provides a system that:

  • protects all humans

  • would protect aliens if they are moral agents

  • protects AIs if they are moral agents

  • does NOT collapse into speciesism

  • does NOT contradict animal ethics

  • does NOT permit “elites” to claim supremacy

  • is universalizable across all forms of life and intelligence

  • will still hold true even if humanity encounters extraterrestrials

It is the most consistent, objective, and philosophically resilient solution.