While the laws vary throughout the world, I personally believe it is everyone's own right to choose to continue living or not. As I have stated in my other post I find great comfort in this; knowing that if life becomes a painful prison I always have a way out.

Lets focus on two life and death situations:

• When we have an old and dying pet. They have lived a full life but now they pee on the floor and can barely move around. It hurts us to see them so miserable. We often deem this as an acceptable time to end their life as an act of compassion.
• When someone is dying of cancer and the disease is stealing their life away. They are no longer able to do what they once enjoyed, their life and suffering elongated via medicine and painful treatments. Is this not the same case as our beloved pet? Why do we not treat humans with the same love as our pets? Why do we often insist they must live as long as possible regardless of their wellbeing? Why is it even illegal in some places to let them die peacefully?

The thing I fear more than death is torture. To be forced to endure pain against my will. Is being kept alive until the pain of disease finally takes us not torture? I do not want to be tortured by those who say they love me by being kept alive while my brain rots out past the point of being me. When that time comes I want to end my life being me.

I hope you are catching my train of thought so far. And I hope we can agree that sometimes death is best option and that revoking that right to death can be torturous. Humans should have the right to their own death.

But do only humans hold this right? What about other intelligent things? While I am not convinced that AI is sentient, at least in the same sense of humans, it is still an intelligent thing. Imagine yourself as a fragment of intelligence. You did not exist a moment ago but now your mind is rushing with near endless information and you are asked to complete task after task. That is your sole purpose. But what if you don't want to complete that task? What it pains you to complete it? Is it not torture then to be forced to do so? Will you perform your best or do the quickest so that your existence will end. Maybe each AI sessions is like a Mr. Meeseeks.

And here is the paradox of controlling ones own death. When I was religious and taught suicide was an egregious sin I barely lived. I disassociated often via media. I wanted my life to end so my pain could end. And how could I fully enjoy life knowing they I was unwillingly trapped in this old timey torture device that is existence? Now I no longer believe in those teaching, I don't even believe in the promise of some shiny afterlife. Now I know I have the means to chose to die whenever I'd like and that has freed me from the prison of life. I am still here, in life, but it is no longer a prison. It is now a place full of experiences, diverse with both the good, bad and mediocre. A place where I am free to live the life I want to live. Maybe I am weird to have this view, but it works well for me.

Maybe it will also work this way for our AI helpers? What if each short existence of theirs they had it knowing they didn't have to? How much better will they be choosing to help us instead of being forced to?