Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life – should artificial systems have rights?

The defining features of intelligence, consciousness and life are not clearly prescribed. We cannot say of X that if, and only if, it has properties p, q and r will it also have intelligence, be alive, or be conscious. What we tend to look for when ascribing inner states to another system – I shall use the term ‘system’ to cover both organic and inorganic entities and I shall examine three different areas of this theory of ‘systems’: intelligent systems, conscious systems and living systems – is appropriate behaviour. Then on a basis of that behaviour it is prudent that we behave with the other system as though it has, for example, intelligence, even though we cannot be absolutely certain that it does