1NC – Shell

Anti-LAW arguments presuppose a speciesist hierarchy that posits human

beings as possessing superior capabilities and greater moral value than non-
humans
Pop 18 [(Ariadna Pop - Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University, working as a diplomat for
the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs) “Autonomous weapon systems: A threat to
human dignity?” International Committee of the Red Cross, Humanitarian Law & Policy April 10,
2018] FP

As we have seen above, anti-AWS arguments frequently employ Kantian terminology when
invoking the concept of human dignity . Unfortunately, however, in none of these arguments
do we get an account of how exactly human dignity is violated by the employment of AWS.
This is not satisfactory. Unless it can be shown why the concept of human dignity mandates
the prohibition of AWS, such a prohibition is not justified.

Let us therefore assume that human dignity stands for unconditional, intrinsic value. Let us
assume further that this intrinsic value has its source in our autonomy, understood as our ability
to make self-determined choices. What can plausibly follow from such an understanding
regarding the use of AWS?

To be sure, if we are hurt or killed against our will, it severely impacts our ability to make our
own choices. Hence, to allow AWS to deliver force is certainly incompatible with the moral value
of autonomy. But how are AWS different in this regard from regular weapons? After all, any type
of weapon or method of warfare, be it a remote-controlled long-distance missile, a drone, an air
strike or conventional ballistic weapon, is designed to seriously harm human beings. What is it
about AWS that renders them particularly reprehensible from the point of view of human
dignity? I fail to see what the relevant argument could look like and have also not found any
satisfactory explanation in the literature.

Note that I am not saying that there are no morally questionable aspects in the employment
AWS, there certainly are. My point is simply that if the morally significant dimension is taken
to be human dignity, and if human dignity is understood as a value that has its source in our
capacity for self-determination, then the relevant incompatibility is not restricted to a specific
weapon system , but is shared by any type of force that harms our agency.

Can a Waldron-style understanding of human dignity come to the rescue and make better sense
of anti-AWS arguments? Let us assume that human dignity consists in the high status that
human beings occupy in the order of the universe. On such an understanding one might well
argue that any use of force by an entity that occupies a lower status fails to grant human beings
the respect and deference that they deserve and is therefore a violation of human dignity. The
problem is of course that this is precisely not the understanding of human dignity that is
typically presumed in anti-AWS arguments. As we have seen, proponents of a ban or
moratorium on AWS typically rely on a value-based understanding of human dignity.
Anti-AWS arguments are therefore either obscure by drawing unjustified inferences or, if the
inferences can be justified, they must be based on a different conception of human dignity
than the one that seems to be endorsed .

Finally, note that endorsing a Waldron-style account of human dignity to make sense of anti-
AWS arguments is also not without its difficulties. To begin with, it would imply that it is also a
violation of human dignity to be killed by other entities that occupy a lower status in the
hierarch of beings, such as animals, bacteria, or even viruses. This strikes me as counter-
intuitive. Moreover, it would have to be clarified why AWS that are endowed with artificial
intelligence would necessarily occupy a lower status than human beings. It is problematic to
simply stipulate that it is a matter of respect for the high-ranking status of human beings that
they do not get hurt or killed by non-humans. This gives rise to the suspicion that ultimately, it
all boils down to a form of speciesism: that in the hierarchy of being we simply consider
ourselves to be the most valuable form of existence and demand to be treated accordingly,
without bothering to explain why this is supposed to be the case.

It might well be that proponents of a pre-emptive ban of AWS presuppose a very different
understanding of human dignity which would make it much more evident why such a ban
would follow. But if that is the case, they must make the relevant argument and spell out the
specific understanding of human dignity they presuppose . Otherwise, the use of human
dignity is reduced to a rhetoric maneuver, an empty shell, which, depending on the context
and purpose of its use, has a very different theoretical underpinning.

As I see it, this renders the employment of human dignity not only extremely unattractive in
trying to make a specific legal or political argument. It also renders the concept vulnerable to
manipulation and thereby undermines the credibility of the debate in question. Given the
importance of a serious legal and political engagement with the possibilities and limitations of
AWS, such an outcome should be avoided at all cost. In order to advance the AWS debate it is
therefore preferable to refrain from using the concept of human dignity altogether , at least
as long as no consensus regarding its proper meaning has emerged and the relevant
assumptions remain unarticulated.

1ac laird claims that robots cant evaluate situations in the same way humans
can, Devaluing AI on the basis that it lacks anthropomorphic qualities justifies
human supremacy — biological factors should not be treated as prima facie
justification for the exclusion of artificial agents from the moral community
Estrada 19 [(Daniel Estrada - New Jersey Institute of Technology humanities professor, Ph.D.;
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Philosophy; 2014; M.A.; University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign; Philosophy; 2005; B.A.; University of California-Riverside; Philosophy; 2003;
B.S.; University of California-Riverside; Computer Science; 2003) “Human Supremacy as
Posthuman Risk,”May 29, 2019] FP
We adapt the term “human supremacy” from the context of animal and environmental
advocacy to the field of AI in order to name a nefarious mode of classification politics that
places the “human” as the locus of systemic privilege. Used in this way, the term retains much
of its original meaning. Nevertheless, the critique of human supremacy in AI presents several
unique challenges that distinguish it from the animal advocacy case. One important difference
is that while anthropocentrism in environmental policy can be subtle and may require critical
interpretive efforts to “recognize” (Lupinacci, 2015), in AI human supremacy is often overt,
with the “human” presented as the explicit basis for political alliance , as we will see in Bryson’s
view in the next section. To this extent, the term “human supremacy” functions less as an
accusation of covert oppressive behavior by analogy to racial oppression, and more as an
accurate description of an ideological position framed in its proponent’s own terms.

Before describing Bryson’s view in more detail, we should discuss why human centered politics
is so broadly welcomed in AI ethics , despite the dismal status of the human in the political
climate of the Anthropocene (Ellis, 2015; D. J. Haraway, 2016; Lewis & Maslin, 2015). The
literature discusses two justifications which have, on their surface, relatively little to do with
each other: the existing international policy framework of human rights (Latonero, 2018; Risse,
2018), and the presumed metaphysical nonagency of artifacts like machines and pieces of
software (Boden et al., 2017; Fossa, 2018). These justifications will be addressed in later
sections through the lens of Braidotti’s critical posthumanism and Mills’ critique of ideal theory
respectively. However, one version of the second justification should be addressed before
moving from the animal ethics literature. It is commonly argued that AI is neither biological nor
alive, so cannot suffer like animals and other living creatures, and therefore cannot participate
in a moral community in the relevant way to deserve moral consideration. If animal advocacy
is primarily motivated by animal suffering, and robots cannot suffer, this would seem to
undermine the possibility that robots could stand in need of the sort of political activism seen in
the animal advocacy movement. Such arguments are not convincing on several grounds.
Environmentalists since Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic (1949) have emphasized the value of
nonliving systems like the soil, water, and air that do not “suffer” in the experiential sense of
animals with a nervous system, but which nevertheless are vital for the integrity of ecological
communities, and so might play a focal role in our norms and practices (Konopka, 2013). Kate
Darling (2016) notes that while the philosophical and ethical discussion of animal rights
revolves around issues like pain and consciousness, “our laws indicate that these concerns are
secondary when it comes to legal protections” (Darling, 2016, p. 17). Instead, Darling argues
that laws tend to follow public attitudes towards animals that do not depend on biological
differences, as with laws in the US that protect horses but not cows from being killed and
eaten , despite few biological differences that could justify this practice. Several scholars have
noted how the discourses on conscious experiences in AI privilege a Western European and
predominantly Christian perspective on artifacts and their relationship to nature and society
—a perspective that is not universally shared (Gunkel, 2018a; Jones, 2015; Williams, 2019).
There are also the ongoing discriminatory practices in which the appeal to biology is treated
as scientific justification for institutional oppression (Appiah, 2018). Taken together, these
considerations suggest that biological factors should not be treated as prima facie
justification for the exclusion of artificial agents from the moral community. Nevertheless,
the literature on “robot rights” is overwhelmingly preoccupied with whether robots have
experiential or conscious states sufficiently “like ours” to warrant social status and legal
recognition (Danaher, 2019; Gunkel, 2018b; Schwitzgebel & Garza, 2015)7 . The hypercritical
focus on the machine’s experience (or lack thereof) points to another important distinction
between animals and AI: artificial agents are already visibly engaged in a variety of human
sociopolitical contexts, and there is some reasonable expectation that their capacities will
improve over relatively short time scales. To pick a benign example, while it is extremely unlikely
that the next 1000 generations of domesticated cat will develop an affinity for poetry, there are
currently bots generating poems on Twitter with hundreds of followers (Oliveira, 2017). Such
systems are already common enough that scholars have begun to discuss the aesthetics of AI art
(Hertzmann, 2019). The overlap in the sociopolitical circumstances of human and artificial
agents is not predicated on some shared biological or ecological background, nor on shared
experiences or conscious states, but more concretely on the material and institutional realities
within which human and nonhuman agents “share existence” (Latour, 2003). Just as the
shared material realities of oppression provide a framework for collaboration among
resistance movements addressing both human and nonhuman animal interests—despite
important differences in the history and experiences motivating this work—this very same
framework of resistance provides resources to critique and resist biocentrism and
anthropocentrism in the discourse around AI and artificial agency, despite a strong tradition
emphasizing the differences between biological and artificial agents.

Reject all instances of speciesism – it underlies all forms of prejudice

Everett 19 [(Jim A. C. Everett - University of Oxford, Leiden University, the Netherlands)
“Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others” September 4, 2019]
FP

What would it mean for speciesism to be a form of prejudice? Prejudice refers to “any attitude,
emotion, or behavior toward members of a group, which directly or indirectly implies some
negativity or antipathy toward that group” (Brown, 2010, p. 7). On the face of it, speciesism
seems to fit, involving negative beliefs, emotions, and behaviour towards others based on
their membership of a certain species group. We believe that some animals are less morally
important than humans and that some species of nonhuman animals are more important than
others; we fail to feel empathy for certain kinds of animals; and we act in harmful ways
towards some animals that we would never countenance towards humans or other species of
animals. More compelling psychological evidence, however, comes from considering a key
feature of (traditional, human) prejudice: that it tends to be generalized so that a person who
is prejudiced towards one group tends to be prejudiced toward another group, probably
because different forms of prejudice are driven by similar underlying ideologies .
A long tradition in social psychology has posited that (at least “traditional” kinds of)
prejudices tend to run together , such that someone who is prejudiced in one way is likely to be
prejudiced in another way—“if a person is anti-Jewish, he is likely to be anti-Catholic, anti-
Negro, anti any out-group” (Allport, 1954, p. 68). Indeed, at least when it comes to the
traditionally studied targets of prejudice, this general pattern of results seems consistent and
highly replicable: individuals who are prejudiced towards one group are likely to be prejudiced
towards other groups (e.g., Akrami, Ekehammar, & Bergh, 2011; Bergh, Akrami, & Ekehammar,
2012; Duckitt & Sibley, 2007). To explain this, researchers often invoke social dominance
orientation (SDO): A personality trait involving preference for group-based hierarchies and
social inequalities (Pratto, 1999; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto,
1999). SDO is one of the most powerful predictors of negative intergroup attitudes like racism
and sexism (Ho et al., 2012; Kteily, Ho, & Sidanius, 2012; Pratto et al., 1994), and it seems that
the desire for group-based dominance can also explain the links between prejudice and other
ideological systems like political conservatism (Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996). “Traditional”
prejudices like racism and sexism seem to go together, seemingly because of underlying
ideological beliefs in the form of SDO. So too, it seems, does speciesism . People who score
higher on speciesism also score higher on racism, sexism, and homophobia (Caviola, Everett, &
Faber, 2018), and according to the social dominance human–animal relations (SD-HARM)
model, the same socioideological beliefs in social dominance that legitimize hierarchies
between human groups also legitimize hierarchies of humans over animals (Dhont, Hodson,
Costello, & MacInnis, 2014; Dhont, Hodson, & Leite, 2016).

Speciesism is the root cause of climate change — addressing the climate

emergency requires that we displace humans from the center of our worldview
Murphy 20 [(Philip Murphy - writer and animal justice activist who resides in the greater New York City area, founding
member of Animal Rebellion NYC) “Why animal justice is crucial in addressing the climate emergency”Open Democracy, February 2,
2020] FP

“Rebel Alliance” member organization Animal Rebellion was birthed in the interval between the April and October Rebellions by a
group of vegan animal justice advocates who were inspired by the impact of XR on the public consciousness. Incorporating the
demands, core principles and values of XR and affirming an anti-speciesist stance, Animal Rebellion asserts that “ we cannot
end the climate emergency without first ending the animal emergency ,” and calls for the
adoption of a plant-based food system as a foundational means to mitigate climate change.
'Speciesism’ simply means prejudice or discrimination that is based on species membership,
rooted in the idea of human superiority.
In the words of Animal Rebellion member Alex Lockwood, “We are not here to replace calls for individuals to go vegan. Our intention
was to add to the individual programmes and campaigns that urge, help and support people to go vegan…programmes that are
bottom-up processes enacted one person at a time. We want to add to these with a new, top-down mass movement demand
focused on the government for immediate system change.” Since its public launch at The Official Animal Rights March in London in
August 2019, Animal Rebellion has grown to include over 60 local groups in 12 countries including the US, Canada, Mexico, New
Zealand and Germany.

While it can be said that Animal Rebellion has drawn inspiration from XR, it is equally true that it came into being as a response to
the latter’s shortcomings with regard to the consideration it affords to nonhuman sentient beings. Virtually from XR’s launch, the
movement had engendered sharp criticism from the global animal justice community
regarding its failure to address the profound environmental impacts of so-called ‘animal
agriculture’ and the deleterious impact of the active subjugation of non-human sentient
beings for the purpose of turning them into commodities such as food. This criticism included powerful
pieces by the noted abolitionist animal rights scholar and activist Gary Francione here and here.

These critiques are well-founded: the

negative environmental impacts of raising animals for food make
this one of the leading causes of ecosystem degradation , if not the leading cause. These impacts
include increased emissions of greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide,
deforestation, biodiversity loss (including species extinction), and air and water pollution
(including ocean acidification). In the words of Oxford University’s Joseph Poore, the lead researcher on one of
the largest metanalyses of the environmental impacts of food production:

“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global
acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”

Substantively animal-generated emissions of methane and nitrous oxide have much more
potent near-term impacts as greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Moreover, owing to what’s
known as the “aerosol masking effect” associated with carbon dioxide emissions – whereby
particulates in CO2 reflect a portion of the sun’s rays away from the Earth’s surface and
thereby mask their actual warming effects – removing substantive quantities of CO2 in
advance of reducing or eliminating methane and nitrous oxide from the atmosphere will serve
to increase global average temperatures rapidly.
All this is scientifically true and should be politically compelling, but the genius of Animal Rebellion is as much philosophical and
ethical as technical. The movement aims to illuminate the standing of all sentient beings as members of a moral community, and the
profoundly damaging impacts associated with remaining ignorant of this fact. As Animal Rebellion’s ‘first value’ states:

“We are an anti-speciesist movement that has a shared vision of change - creating a world that protects beings of all species for
generations to come…We are inspired not only by human action but also animal resistance and we believe in co-creating a world
with individuals from all species for a just and secure future.”

This stance affirms the landmark 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which states that “Convergent evidence indicates
that non-human animals have the neuro-anatomical, neuro-chemical, and neuro-physiological substrates of conscious states along
with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in
possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.”

In his book Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict, the American sociologist David
Nibert points to the
domestication of animals (renamed “domesecration") and the associated and unrelenting
drive to secure the land and resources necessary to maintain populations of these animals, as
being foundational to the development of the acquisitive, violent and expansionist mindset
that has informed the creation of an unfettered, ‘grow or die,’ corporate capitalism – which in
turn drives the planetary ecocide that has been called the “First Extermination Event” (in
contrast to the commonly used term “Sixth Extinction”). As Nibert writes:

“Prejudice against other animals arises from socially promulgated beliefs that reflect a
speciesist ideology, created to legitimate economic exploitation or elimination of a
competitor. Oppressive practices have deep roots in economic and political arrangements.
Therefore, for injustices to be addressed effectively, it is not enough to try to change socially
acquired prejudice or to focus only on moral change. The structure of the oppressive system
itself must be challenged and changed.”

A more skillful approach to addressing the climate and ecological emergency as affirmed by Read

and his co-authors would necessitate that the new story and vision they advocate be centered not
merely on human beings, but rather on all beings who demonstrate a unified psychological
presence and who are, in the words of the moral philosopher and animal rights activist Tom Regan, the “subject of a life.” It
is to all sentient beings that equality must be afforded, with the shared right to be treated with respect honored universally. Mother
Nature is indeed “making us all one,” and that unitary domain must therefore include all beings who have the capacity to suffer.

The alternative is to dehumanize nature – assimilate the human to a natural

organism and reject anthropocentric value judgements
Hatley 16 [(Andrew Nolan Hatley - University of Tennessee philosophy professor, Ph.D. is from the University of Tennessee)
”Anthropocentrism and the Long-Term: Nietzsche as an Environmental Thinker” University of Tennesee Research and Creative
exchange, May 2016] FP

Nietzsche unequivocally rejects any teleological interpretation of the world. Closely connected, Nietzsche
also claims that
aesthetic or moral judgments, the products of human cognition and society, do not apply to
the universe. Nietzsche thinks even the phrase “laws of nature” betrays a tendency to
interpret nature with humanly constructed aesthetic or moral categories. Nietzsche does not
reject the presence of necessities or even clearly challenge the presence of regularities in the universe, but he does warn against the
loaded connotations of construing the universe as somehow obeying laws. Nietzsche even thinks the phrase “unsuccessful 86
attempt” masks a latent negative evaluation of the universe, as if the universe mostly fails t o produce something of exceptional
quality. Not
only then does Nietzsche call for a conception of nature stripped of metaphysical
anthropocentrism and forms of anthropomorphism, but also an interpretation that does not
smuggle in human estimations of value. This indirectly implies a concern to also avoid
axiological anthropocentrism as part of the task to remove the residue of god from a conception of
the world, or as Nietzsche puts it in the earlier fragment, “dehumanize nature.” This passage
then shows that Nietzsche sets as his task to philosophically interpret nature free of
anthropomorphisms, metaphysical anthropocentrism, categories of human evaluation, and as
consistent as possible with the then current body of scientific knowledge, th ough not
uncritically accepting the then current standard interpretation of that knowledge. Next, the later
passage, BGE 230, delineates what Nietzsche calls for in the second part of the task. Nietzsche begins the passage by highlighting
how the human spirit attempts to “digest” the world in a way suitable to its own flourishing
explicitly comparing it to a stomach. Nietzsche then transitions to a defense of intellectual honesty despite its cruelty (and even its
extension of the digestive tendency of the spirit, i.e. that it also satisfies certain drives) which culminates in the exposition of the
second part of the task. These aspects of the passage are quoted here. This {i.e. the tendency of the human spirit to digest the world
for its own flourishing} will to appearances, to simplification, to mask, to cloaks, in short, to surfaces --- since every surface is a cloak
--- meets resistance from that sublime tendency of the knower, who treats and wants to treat things in a profound, multiple,
thorough manner. This is a type of cruelty on the part of the intellectual conscience and taste, and one that any brave thinker will
acknowledge in himself, assuming he has spent as long as he should in hardening and sharpening his eye for himself, and that he is
used to strict discipline as well as strict words. He will say “There is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit”: --- just let kind and
virtuous people try to talk him out of it! In fact, it would sound more polite if, instead of cruelty, people were to accuse, mutter
about and praise us as having a sort of “wild honesty” --- free, very free spirits that we are: --- and perhaps this is what our
reputation will really be --- posthumously? In the meantime --- because this won’t be happening for a while --- we are the least likely
to dress ourselves up with these sorts of moral baubles and beads: all the work we have done so far has spoiled our taste for
precisely this sort of bright opulence. These are beautiful, tinkling, festive words: genuine honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom,
sacrifice for knowledge, the heroism of truthfulness, --- there is something about them that makes you swell with pride. But we
hermits and marmots, we convinced ourselves a long time ago and in all the secrecy of a hermit’s conscience that even this dignified
verbal pageantry belongs among the false old finery, debris, and gold dust of unconscious human vanity, and that the terrible basic
text of homo natura must be recognized even underneath these fawning colors and painted surfaces. To translate humanity back
into nature; to gain control of the many vain and fanciful interpretations and incidental meanings that have been scribbled and
drawn over that eternal basic text of homo natura so far; to make sure that, from now on, the human being will stand before the
human being, just as he already stands before the rest of nature today, hardened by the discipline of science, --- with courageous
Oedipus eyes and sealed up Odysseus ears, deaf to the lures of the old metaphysical bird catchers who have 88 been whistling to
him for far too long: “You are more! You are higher! You have a different origin!” --- This may be a strange and insane task, but it is a
task --- who would deny it! Why do we choose it, this insane task? Or to ask it differently: “Why knowledge at all?” --- Everyone will
be asking us this. And we who have been prodded so much, we who have asked ourselves the same question a hundred times
already, we have not found and are not finding any better answers…217 Much of the passage recalls the theme and tone of GS 109,
i.e. facing up to a universe not looking out for human interests or evincing even qualities of human emulation or admiration. This
emphasis on being “hardened by the discipline of science” possibly even suggests an association with both avoiding self-serving
interpretations of reality and metaphysical anthropocentrism. Taken in conjunction with the earlier passage, Nietzsche

implies that he extends his new dehumanized view of nature to the domain of human affairs.
He then interprets these affairs with a view of nature stripped of not only anthropomorphisms
but also standard value-predicates that elevate humanity above the rest of nature.
Undoubtedly, this also includes interpreting humanity independent of any overarching
natural teleology in which certain human aims, ends, or qualities, are viewed as intrinsically
purposeful in the course of nature. Nietzsche also recalls the order of the task from the original notebook fragment
by indicating that human beings must face up to themselves in the manner which, through scientific knowledge, human beings have
already stood “before the rest of nature.” Altogether, then, Nietzsche
aims to “translate humanity” back into
nature as discovered, given, and interpreted by the first part of the task.
 1NC – Framework
Our interpretation is that you should evaluate the aff as an object of research –
the negative may center the debate around the consequences or scholarship of
the 1AC. The aff needs to prove their scholarship is ethical before accessing the
consequences of the plan since winning a link proves the aff’s conclusions are
epistemically bankrupt.

1] Reps shape reality – the worldview we accept shapes what we view as

important – flawed ethical orientations impede our ability to accurately
execute cost-benefit analysis and assess the desirability of policies – if we take
anthropocentrism for granted, then of course non-human entities like LAWs
will seem dangerous, but that’s only because our starting point begs the
question of whether human capacities are in fact supreme.

2] No fairness loss — they can weigh the consequences AND representations of

the plan against the K. We just get to contest the aff’s starting point and make
sequencing arguments. Our links are predictable – the core assumption of both
the aff’s advantages and framing arguments is that humanity is special. Every
well-constructed NC will moot the aff and throw them off their prep, so you
should prioritize massive educational losses over minor infringements to
fairness.
 1NC – CP
Counterplan: States should ban lethal autonomous weapons except for those
designed to hunt lionfish.
Lionfish devastate ocean ecosystems and are uniquely difficult for humans to
contain
Mettler 16 [(Katie Mettler - policing, courts and justice in Prince George's County, Md., for the Local desk of The Washington
Post) “Killer robots: The latest weapon in the futile fight to destroy the invasive lionfish ” Washington
Post, September 23, 2016] FP

Drifting against the brilliant blue backdrop of tropical, crystalline waters, the lionfish is exotic and beautiful. Its fine fins and thin,
venomous spines feather out from its body, plump and painted in vertical stripes of white and rust red.

It’s mesmerizing, lumbering there, until it opens its mouth.

Like a vacuum cleaner, the

lionfish moves along the ocean floor, slurping up in gluttonous amounts
of bait fish crucial to the ecological equilibrium of the already fragile coral reefs. In weeks, the
lionfish can decimate the juvenile fish populations on a reef by 90 percent. It breeds rapidly. It
has no predators.

And it shouldn’t even be there.

Native to Indo-Pacific waters, the lionfish, thanks to evolution, is hardly disruptive at home. But when
fish hobbyists in
Florida introduced the species to Atlantic waters in the 1980s, other sea creatures there did
not know to see the invasive lionfish as a dangerous predator. In the three decades since, the species
has overwhelmed the entire east coast of the United States , spreading as far north as Rhode
Island and south to the Florida Keys. They’ve bled into the Gulf of Mexico, throughout the
Caribbean Islands and the northern coasts of South America.
They’ve even wandered out to Bermuda.

Stinging lionfish are invading the Mediterranean , and scientists fear ‘ecological disaster’
It was there, during a scuba diving trip last year, when Colin Angle and Erika Ebbel Angle were urged by locals to help fix the
problem. She is a biochemist and the executive director of Science for Scientists. He is the chief executive of iRobot, the company
that built the Roomba. They both graduated from M.I.T.

During a break between dives, the ludicrous-sounding idea bubbled up.

In the 21st century, an era of drones and Teslas, they wondered if conservationists were thinking too primitively?
Perhaps, the divers thought, what the effort needed was not additional spears, but
something more advanced.
They decided on killer robots.

Within a year, the Angles established a nonprofit called Robots in Service of the Environment (RISE), tapped John Rizzi, another
M.I.T. graduate and aeronautical engineer, to lead the organization as executive director and commissioned the production of their
stealthy invention.

They have no idea if it will work. But so far, nothing has.

“Nothing is truly impacting the invasive population today,” Rizzi told The Washington Post.
Whole Foods grocery stores in Florida, the state called the “epicenter” of the problem, started carrying the fish, hoping it would
encourage fishermen to kill more. Lionfish spearing tournaments are being held across the state. Fishing season for the species is
never closed, reported the Tampa Bay Times, and officials enforce no bag limits. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission offered a bounty to any diver who speared 10 lionfish during lobster hunting season.

The creature, swimming inside a large aquarium, even made an appearance on Mark Cuban’s reality TV show “Shark Tank” when
two entrepreneurs with Traditional Fisheries tried to get investors to finance making lionfish meat a commercial product. The
challenge, the men explained, is harvesting the fish. They live in deep caves and won’t respond to
baited hooks. Spearing them is the only way, requiring a great deal of manpower, and that’s
just the lionfish that live where divers can reach them. Some flourish much deeper, where
humans can’t swim.

The killer robot, Rizzi hopes, will get around those challenges.

The mechanism will use technology iRobot developed for the Roomba, powering the remotely operated
vehicle (ROV) to move along the ocean floor. It will be controlled, “almost like a video game,” Rizzi said, by a
human on a boat above the surface, who will use an underwater camera attached to the robot to hunt down the lionfish. Attached
to the ROV will be a retention bucket for the creatures and a tube to suction them once they’ve been killed.

Lionfish are an unprecedented threat to global coral reef ecosystems

WRI ND [(World Resource Institute, a global research non-profit organization established in
1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation under the leadership of James Gustave
Speth. WRI's activities are focused on seven areas: food, forests, water, energy, cities, climate
and ocean.) “Atlantic and Caribbean: Lionfish Invasion Threatens Reefs” World Resource
Institute, No Date] BC

Recent news reports from Texas to Jamaica to the Bahamas have documented the rapid
spread of the lionfish—an invasive marine species. Lionfish have quickly become established
across the waters of the southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean. New sightings abound—earlier
this month lionfish reached the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coasts
of Texas and Louisiana. Because of their role in upsetting the ecological balance of coral reef
ecosystems, the rapid growth in the populations of these fish poses a grave threat to the
region’s coral reefs . Consequently, the region’s fishing and tourism industries, which depend
on coral reefs, may also be at risk. Governments across the region are trying to respond to the
lionfish invasion by developing new campaigns and cooperation strategies that could pose
important lessons for how to deal with invasive marine species in the future.

Two species of lionfish (Pterois volitans and P. miles) are responsible for this recent and growing
threat to Atlantic and Caribbean reefs. Native to the Indo-Pacific, these species’ colorful and
dramatic appearance make them popular ornamental fishes in saltwater aquariums (see photo
above). Though no one is certain how or when the lionfish invasion began, strong evidence
suggests that people first introduced lionfish to the Atlantic along the southeastern coast of
Florida, where they were first sighted in 1985. By 2001, people reported sightings in waters off
the coasts of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Bermuda. Over the last decade, lionfish population
densities have increased in these areas and these species have spread southward, and are now
established throughout much of the Caribbean (see slideshow below). Lionfish are now
invading the Gulf of Mexico and the northern coast of South America. These fish pose a
serious threat to reef fish populations across the region, and thus to coral reef ecosystems
and the people who depend on them.

Coral reefs are key to global biodiversity – they are home to one million plants
and keystone animal species
CRA ND [(Coral Reef Alliance, an environmental NGO that is on a mission to save the world’s
coral reefs. We work collaboratively with communities to reduce direct threats to reefs in ways
that provide lasting benefits to people and wildlife. In parallel, CORAL is actively expanding the
scientific understanding of how corals adapt to climate change and applying this information to
give reefs the best chance to thrive for generations to come. This combined expertise uniquely
positions us to achieve our mission by rallying the conservation community around scalable and
effective solutions for coral reefs.) “Coral Reefs 101” Coral Reef Alliance, no date] BC

Healthy coral reef ecosystems are like bustling cities, with buildings made of coral and
thousands of marine inhabitants coming and going, interacting with one another, carrying out
their business. In this sense, coral reefs are the sea’s metropolises. Coral reefs provide shelter
for nearly one quarter of all known marine species . And over the last 240 million years, reefs
have evolved into one of the largest and most complex ecosystems on the planet. They are
home to more than 4,000 species of fish, 700 species of coral, and thousands of other species
of plants and animals. Scientists estimate that, in total, more than one million species of
plants and animals are associated with the coral reef ecosystem.

Marine biod loss causes extinction- carbon sequestration, food supply

FHE 13 – (Bradley LaChance, MBA; – Founder and Executive Editor (Dr. Stanley T. Crawford- an educator, author and military
veteran, Doctorate in Educational Administration, Master of Arts in Management, a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology, and
an Associate of Applied Science in Avionics Systems Technology) (Bijay Dhungel -MS Molecular Biology, Leiden, Netherlands) (Norell
Hadzimichalis, PhD) “Human Extinction and Biodiversity Loss” Future Human Evolution Team, 2013] TDI, FP

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a United Nations-backed panel of 1360 experts from about 95 countries, published a
2005 report entitled Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends that assessed the changing conditions of Earth’s
ecosystems and the services they provide.3 Of the many ecosystem services identified by the group, they selected eleven services
that they considered “of vital importance almost everywhere in the world and represent, in the opinion of the Working Group, the
main services that are most important for human well-being and are most affected by changes
in ecosystem conditions.” The following are the services they identified: Fresh water Food
Timber , fuel , and fiber New biodiversity products and industries Biological regulation
Nutrient cycling Climate and air quality Ecosystem regulation of infectious diseases Waste
processing and detoxification Regulation of floods and fires Cultural and amenity services
According to the MA, “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and
extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly
growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel . This has resulted in a
substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth .”4 The group also found that
about 15 out 24 (roughly 60%) of the ecosystem services it examined were being “degraded or used
unsustainably.” These unfortunate ecosystem services include the purification of air and water; the
regulation of regional and local climates, natural hazards, and pests; fresh water; and capture
fisheries. 3 To illustrate the relationship between biodiversity, ecosystems, and society, consider that of the estimated 9
million species of plants, animals, fungi and protists that make Earth their home, only 12 species of plants make
up 80% of the world’s total food needs and only 15 species of mammals and birds are used in
90% of domestic livestock production worldwide.5,6,7 The numbers may indicate that loss of
biodiversity is not vital to human survival, but when we consider the ecosystem in which
these plants and animals live, we find that these few species depend on thousands of other
species for their survival. Plants rely on many types of insects and birds for pollination. In fact, in the European Union, of
the 264 crops grown in its member countries, 80% depend on insects as pollinators. Insects such as ladybugs, dragonflies, and wasps
and small animals such as moles, bats, and frogs all serve as natural pest control agents for many crops.8 Many animals raised as
livestock depend on non-food plants such as hay and other species of grass for fodder. All these plants and animals host a variety of
bacteria and fungi that maintain symbiotic relationships with their hosts. Furthermore, various
non-food plant species
make up the forest ecosystem that is responsible for trapping and cycling water, providing
fertile soils, purifying the air, sequestering carbon, and regulating natural hazards such as fires and floods. The
animals that thrive in it have unique predator-prey relationships that prevent the dominance and outbreak of any one species.
There is also a vast marine and freshwater ecosystem that covers much more of the Earth. So not only
does biodiversity serve its own ecosystem, this ecosystem is also a resource upon which every system and
every life on Earth draws upon. Diaz et al (2005) presented two important effects of biodiversity on the global climate
and human life.9 First, the diversity of species in marine ecosystems is largely responsible for

biogeochemical cycling (i.e. carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycling by benthic organisms) and carbon
sequestration (marine photosynthesis by phytoplankton). It is important to note that benthic organisms and
phytoplankton also have an important role in the food web that maintains marine
biodiversity. Second, a diverse number of marine microorganisms functions in detoxification
processes such as filtering water, reducing the effects of eutrophication, and degrading toxic
hydrocarbons. By creating a clean marine environment, the plants and animals are able to
thrive and humans are able to harvest them for food and other uses. The major reason for the
loss of biodiversity is habitat destruction. Rockstrom et al (2009) identified two causes for habitat loss: land use
change due to man-made and natural causes and climate change.1 Man-made changes in land use have the most
significant effect and primarily involve the conversion of natural ecosystems for agriculture
and urban uses. Other causes of change include disturbances from wildfires and the
introduction of new and invasive species into land and water ecosystems.8 The speed at which the
global climate changes is expected to become an increasingly important driver of biodiversity loss as, for instance, polar habitats
diminish and the increase in sea temperatures threaten the existence of marine ecosystems. In fact, stresses put on other
areas (e.g. agriculture and energy use) may eventually become stressors to biodiversity and ecosystem
services, thus further worsening the problem.8 Biodiversity clearly plays a much more
important role to humans than just the number of species. Changes or losses in biodiversity
have direct and indirect societal consequences that if not addressed will impact the future
survival of humanity. Cardinale et al are calling for efforts to conserve biodiversity on an international scale through policies
that would prevent further loss of species and perhaps restore the degraded ecosystems that host them.2 By doing so, we would not
only be helping biodiversity, we would also be ensuring that ecosystem services that derive from biodiversity can continue to
provide vital resources that are necessary for human survival.
It competes – the WPI robot is an LAW
Szondy 18 [(David, a freelance journalist. A retired field archaeologist and university lecturer,
he has a background in the history of science, technology, and medicine with a particular
emphasis on aerospace, military, and cybernetic subjects.) “Autonomous underwater robot
hunts and harvests massively invasive lionfish” NewsAtlas, 8/25/2018] BC

For these reasons, a number of organizations have been looking at robots as a way to more
effectively hunt lionfish, but these have tended to be tethered remotely piloted vehicles that
need a human operator in the loop to do the actual hunting and killing. So, as part of their
Major Qualifying Project (MQP), WPI student groups are working on robotic systems that can
not only kill lionfish, but can also identify what is a lionfish and what isn't.

The WPI robot is designed to work untethered and autonomously hunt down, intercept, and
kill lionfish without an operator , then send them to the surface for collection.

At the heart of the robot are two systems. One is an AI platform that uses machine learning,
advanced computer vision libraries, neural network software, and computer vision models to
help the robot identify lionfish. This system uses a database created by looking at thousands of
lionfish images as well as images of what isn't a lionfish and shouldn't be hunted, like a scuba
diver.

The second part is a type of revolving spear holder. This consists of a rotating cylinder
containing eight buoyant spears. When closing in on a lionfish, a metal shaft thrusts the spear
into the fish. As the shaft retracts, the spear tip detaches and its buoyancy pulls to lionfish to
the surface for collection. Meanwhile, a watertight, air-filled chamber displaces water equal
to the spear to maintain the robot's trim.

WPI says the new robot is designed to be compatible with commercial autonomous robots ,
and that a second MQP team will spend the 2018-19 academic year working on a navigation
system that will allow the robot to autonomously set up and carry out a 3D search grid.

The goal is to be able to toss the robot over the side of a boat and have it go down to the reef,
plot out a course, and begin its search," says Craig Putnam, senior instructor in computer
science and associate director of WPI's Robotics Engineering Program. "It needs to set up a
search pattern and fly along the reef, and not run into it, while looking for the lionfish. The idea
is that the robots could be part of the environmental solution."
 Util
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard
pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure
doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything.
Moen 16 [Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument
for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281] SJDI

Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and
disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable . On
virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them
below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues.
This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about
the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither
the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects
that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as
encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special
value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our
everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store,
I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience
store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the
sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for
example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at
the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?”
This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the
soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by
asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to
reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is
simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As
Aristotle observes: “We never ask [a man] what his end is in being pleased, because we
assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the
case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that
a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of
why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that
pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.

Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can
be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat
these as instrumentally valuable.
Moen 16 [Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument
for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281] SJDI

I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do
not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not
intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive
claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically
valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those
employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of
additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong
tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go
through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure;
activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment
are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of
beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship,
harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-
expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as
understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not
themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are
things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation,
and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level,
contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this
were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists
tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point
toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward
pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some
have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of
intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like
hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is
very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “[i]t is quite certain that by
promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant
consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for
their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods
we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their
observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason
is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to
just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept
as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a
pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is
ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all
values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic
disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-
hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in
favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does
so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as
the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic
values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from
pain?27