'Both/And - Why Robots Should not Be Slaves' by David J. Gunkel in Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond (MIT Press, 2023) comments
One solution to the exclusive person/thing dichotomy that persists in both moral philosophy and law is slavery. Already in Roman times, slaves were regarded as something more than a mere thing but not quite a full person. They occupied a liminal position that was situated in between the one and the other, being both thing and person. And there has been, in both the legal and philosophical literature, a surprising number of serious proposals arguing for instituting what can only be called Slavery 2.0. This chapter provides a thorough critique of these “robots should be slaves” proposals, demonstrating how this supposed solution to the person/thing dichotomy actually produces more and significantly worse problems than it can possibly begin to resolve.
