  The 'robot rights' debate, and its related question of 'robot
responsibility', invokes some of the most polarized positions in AI ethics.
While some advocate for granting robots rights on a par with human beings,
others, in a stark opposition argue that robots are not deserving of rights but
are objects that should be our slaves. Grounded in post-Cartesian philosophical
foundations, we argue not just to deny robots 'rights', but to deny that
robots, as artifacts emerging out of and mediating human being, are the kinds
of things that could be granted rights in the first place. Once we see robots
as mediators of human being, we can understand how the `robots rights' debate
is focused on first world problems, at the expense of urgent ethical concerns,
such as machine bias, machine elicited human labour exploitation, and erosion
of privacy all impacting society's least privileged individuals. We conclude
that, if human being is our starting point and human welfare is the primary
concern, the negative impacts emerging from machinic systems, as well as the
lack of taking responsibility by people designing, selling and deploying such
machines, remains the most pressing ethical discussion in AI.
