Sunday Morning Hot Tea - No. 14
An Early COVID Memory and Rights for Robots
Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then answer a legal question for you down below. This week – an early COVID memory and rights for robots!
In this edition
Topic of the Week – Have A Day (Happy)
Legal Question – Robots in Love
TOPIC THIS WEEK: Have A Day (Happy)
Early last summer when the virus reemerged even worse than before, people tried finding safe ways to connect with those most vulnerable. I ended up involved in one of those ways by virtue of an outdoor parade at a retirement community. Paris and I stood, mask on, among a crowd of volunteers on a street corner. Encouraging sign in hand, I found myself once again asking, How did I get here?
The community’s activities director had solicited volunteers from a post on Facebook. When we arrived that afternoon, the director met us outside, her face covered by a bright pink mask. She stood beside a speaker on wheels the size of a carry-on suitcase.
Her father was there, too. His car decked out in a handful of American flags, he asked if we “also” went to church with his daughter. This question explained the other volunteers standing around, two with handmade signs, and one with a bunch of balloons.
It also confirmed for me that my choice of sign wording: “Stay Safe! Stay Strong! God Bless!” was on-brand with the crowd we found ourselves in. Not that I would have otherwise written, “Hail Satan!” or anything. But it did take a few choices off the table including, “Life is Short, Hump Around!” or “YOLO!”
I explained, no, we were not from church, but Facebook friends. The director told the now sweaty crowd of sign bearers that we were waiting for “just a few more” volunteers to arrive. A few minutes later, two couples approached, waving, from down the block.
Aside from the heat, it wasn’t a bad place to wait. This retirement community, I should mention, was not a dilapidated dumping ground for unwanted grandparents. This was basically a luxury resort with four stories of residences and countless amenities. As we were driving in, Paris and I marveled at the immaculate landscaping and surrounding fountains and statues.
“Even rich older people need visitors,” I said, rationalizing our mission.
“Agreed,” Paris said. “Age doesn’t care about money. It’s the one thing that gets us all.”
Of the two couples arriving, one was younger and looked like an alternate universe version of Paris and me. The other was older than us, likely in their early fifties. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, I would never once hear the man speak. His wife, on the other hand, would not stop talking. She had a close-cropped blonde bob and sunglasses with rhinestones. She wore a white linen shirt with cropped jeans and platform sandals. She was also, most notably, not wearing a mask.
“I hope I don’t COVID anybody,” she said with a laugh, using the highly contagious virus that is spread by breathing as a verb.
As the parade began, we marched forward with the music from the suitcase speaker blaring. I noticed the maskless blonde woman had two plastic packages in her hand. They were five-packs of gum, one Juicy Fruit and the other Big Red.
Walking past the residents on their patios and balconies, the woman began hurling the gum packets at them. Curious geriatrics would crack their doors only to be met with a blasting rendition of “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” and pelted with purse gum.
“Didn’t quite make that one,” I said of a Big Red pack that came to a stop on the ground below a woman in a house dress peering down from a second-floor balcony. The blonde stuck her hand in her purse and pulled out more gum that she thrust into my hand.
“You throw some,” she said. She walked quickly ahead to bean a small fragile woman with some Juicy Fruit. We’d only just met, yet she expected me to participate in this absurd reverse Mardi Gras parade.
“God really provided for us with the weather today,” she called out gleefully. Yes, what fun would it be to aim candy at grandparents if you had to balance an umbrella in the other hand while doing it?
“Hey!” she called out to the director. “Hey! Hey! Change the song! Play some ‘Good Vibrations’ why don’t you?”
The director was being blasted in the ears by the speaker but managed to turn her head and catch Gum Lady’s wild arms waving. “CHANGE! THE! SONG! Play something more upbeat!” The director gave a thumbs up and pulled out her phone.
Suddenly the clink and chant of Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” began.
“Not the song I would have chosen,” I said to Paris. “But ok.”
The woman with the gum was not enjoying this jam either. “Hey!” she called out again. “Change the song!” The song changed again, this time to the “YMCA” which seemed to get her engine revved. She started dance-walking.
I want to tell you now that this next part makes me sound like an asshole. This lady was really excited about the parade. She was overjoyed to be out in the world, screaming with no mask on, whipping chewing gum at people. In my defense, it was about 95 degrees out there. I had not seen more than a handful of any human beings in months. The sun was bright. The music was loud. Therefore it was inevitable that I would decide in that moment that I hated her.
As we rounded the corner, we came upon a large puddle and all navigated our way around it.
“Look, you guys,” Gum Lady yelled while walking near the puddle. She had taken a break from her aggressive candy distribution and was now waving her homemade sign she had taken from her husband’s hands. “Look! They’ve got a pool!” she joked.
Would someone shut her up? I thought. The Lord had delivered on the weather. Was it too much to ask for another miracle?
I turned my head toward Paris, probably about to say something snarky, when behind us, I heard a splash.
The woman was fully on her back in the “pool” she had discovered, jeans and white linen shirt drenched. The sign she had been holding was floating face down in the water. Pockets full of now-soggy gum, ruined. I felt a gut punch of secondhand embarrassment for her with a side of shame for my own shitty thoughts.
Paris sprinted over to help, but she refused his outstretched hand. Instead, she plunged her hand in the water and pulled out her sign.
“I’m fine. I’m totally fine,” she said, laughing and steadying herself. “Here, you carry this now.” She thrust the sign into Paris’s hands before standing up and dusting herself off. She was perhaps a little embarrassed but not injured. My heart softened to her as I watched her shake the water from her foam platform flip flops.
Paris held the dripping poster board away from his body and tried showing it to the residents watching from their balconies. They leaned forward and squinted at its running ink.
The left side of the woman’s sign read, “Have a Day!” Next to that, she had drawn a traditional smiley face. Beneath it all, she had written “HAPPY!”
Paris smiled at me under his mask and held the sign for me to read. Have a day we did, and we were happy.
QUESTIONS FROM YOU – WandaVision and the Rights of Robots
[SPOILER ALERT – This will have spoilers for WandaVision. If you haven’t finished the show, save this for another day when you’re done.]
This week’s question comes from Megan R. via the form.
Megan asked:
“No spoilers but on WandaVision, I saw Vision’s name next to Wanda’s on a legal document for a house. Could a robot own a house?”
Excellent question, Megan!
If you haven’t watched WandaVision and you really like Marvel stuff and/or television, I’d highly recommend it. As a fan of The Dick Van Dyke Show, I particularly enjoyed the references to 1960s sitcom tropes. I also love my college improv teammate and friend, Asif Ali, and will watch him in anything. He absolutely crushed his role in this show!
Now to the question. The document Wanda was seen holding was a deed for a piece of land in Westview, New Jersey. A deed is used to transfer land between owners. The person receiving the land is called the Grantee. The one transferring the land is called the Grantor. After the deed is signed, the parties record it with the county clerk, and the transfer is done.
The deed in the show listed the grantees as “Wanda Maximoff AND The Vision.” We do not see who the Grantor was. Presumably, it was the former owner of the house, but the internet has some fan theories about who gave her that deed and whether it’s from some evil doer or future villain.
CAN VISION OWN A HOUSE SINCE HE’S A ROBOT?
Not to sound like Comic Book Guy, but first of all, Vision is not just a robot. According to the MCU Fandom Wiki, “Vision is a synthezoid made from vibranium… and given life by the powerful artifact known as the Mind Stone.” Synthezoid means an android (a robot designed to resemble a human) that is “made partly or entirely of synthetic, organic-like materials.” He’s a robot with fake people guts. AND FEELINGS!
Let’s go point by point and decide whether Vision is a human or robot.
In an early episode of WandaVision, we see Vision chew a piece of gum. He’s got a human-like mouth, but when he swallows the gum, his inner gears grind to a halt. LOL A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR ROBOT WAS STOPPED BY GUM! Somebody keep that lady from the retirement home parade away from him! While he can chew gum, he apparently cannot digest it. Can any of us? One point for the human category.
The MCU Fandom Wiki also says that synthezoids don’t sleep because they run on internal batteries. This brings along with it some disturbing visuals of Wanda, a human, sleeping soundly while Vision stares blankly at the ceiling. Yikes. That is definitely creepy robot behavior. One point for the robot category.
In Captain America: Civil War, the United Nations ratified the Sokovia Accords, which purport to regulate the Avengers. Vision is one of the “enhanced individuals” who “signs” on to the Accords. If he’s merely a thing and not a human, they would not need or want his signature. Another point in the human category.
He is made of vibranium and has a bunch of wires inside him. He can walk through walls and fly. He’s got a metal Ken-doll situation going on downstairs. Another point in the robot category.
So we’re at a tie. Even if Vision is a robot, he is no ordinary one. He’s kind of like a robot+, especially since he was “given life” by the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone is a magical gem as old as the universe. It sits in the middle of Vision’s forehead, which, if rapper Lil Uzi Vert is any indication, is a very convenient place to put an irreplaceable gem.
Then, when Thanos rips off Vision’s Mind Stone in Avengers: Infinity War, Vision dies.
Sooooo…. Vision is a partially synthetic being that has been given life and can be killed and can feel feelings and sign documents? Sounds human-ish to me! But human-ish is not human, which means he doesn’t have rights, including the right to own property … right?
DO ROBOTS HAVE RIGHTS?
This is a decades-old discussion of legal theory that took me down some philosophical rabbit holes as I was researching. As a basis, when we think of rights, we tend to think of the rights of people. Heck, the U.S. Constitution starts off “We the people.”
But non-humans also have rights - namely, animals and corporations. Why is it so unthinkable that someday robots may have rights?
According to legal scholars and even a UK Supreme Court Justice, the idea of robots having rights is not too far off. Yes, this thought is disturbing. I, for one, don’t want to see these unstoppable horror machines given rights any more than you do.
The question really comes down to personhood. If a “person” has rights, what do we mean by “person”? Does that mean human beings only?
When we refer to the rights of corporations to sue, be sued, or to enter into contracts including for real estate transactions, we call that “corporate personhood.” Further, in 2010, the United States Supreme Court determined that corporations have First Amendment political rights to buy ads in all American elections in the Citizens United v. FEC decision. This means a non-human corporation has the rights to constitutional First Amendment protections. Nevermind the fact that the Constitution begins “We the people.”
If a corporation can have property rights, the right to sue, and the right to free speech, can’t we let this synthezoid and his human lady friend own a frickin’ piece of land?
IF VISION CAN’T OWN THE LAND – DOES WANDA OWN IT OUTRIGHT?
Let’s say you’re a monster who doesn’t want to see Vision and Wanda own this land together. Or, even if you do, too bad. Vision is dead.
In that case, who owns the land? For that we turn to basic property rights.
As with most legal questions, the answer is: it depends. If the wording of the deed includes language that the land is owned by the two as “joint tenants with rights of survivorship” then the land will pass to the surviving co-tenant/co-owner – Wanda.
If the deed does not use that phrase, then it means that the property was owned as tenants in common. This is a different type of ownership scenario where the parties own their halves separately. Therefore, the share belonging to the deceased co-tenant (Vision) would pass to his heirs.
Who are Vision’s heirs? He and Wanda weren’t legally married. Their kids were figments of her imagination (OR WERE THEY? TBD!) He has no parents because he was Frankenstein’ed together by several creators.
So who gets the land then?
In 2017, the EU Parliament wrote a report to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics that proposes a concept of robot rights/liabilities similar to that of corporations. The determination was that “the responsibility must lie with a human and not a robot” in determining liability. I would argue that property rights would pass much the same way: to the robot’s owner.
Ok then, who “owned” Vision? Wanda? S.W.O.R.D.? S.H.I.E.L.D.? Nobody?
And, for that matter, is Vision even dead?
White Vision is out sailing through the sky trying to find himself, a reassembled synthezoid made of old Vision’s parts who has been endowed with old Vision’s thoughts and memories. After the Vision vs. White Vision fight and the Ship of Theseus conversation, perhaps White Vision is Vision now. He’s the only Vision still standing. the WandaVision Vision was contained to the Hex and went poof right along with it when the Hex was taken down.
In the WandaVision post-credits scene, Wanda hears the screams of their kids as she’s meditating. If their kids are alive out there in some alternate universe and weren’t totally destroyed when the Hex went down, then is the WandaVision Vision out there, too? And if so, what does that mean for White Vision? All this comic book universe talk is all giving me double vision. (See what I did there?)
CONCLUSION
I say Vision should have the right to own land. Corporations aren’t people, and they own land all the time. Plus, with the way robots are evolving, there may soon come a time when machines that autonomously create will be given rights over their creations, paving the way for robot property rights. Until that time, it doesn’t make much sense to say no to a being with unlimited power and a wife who is the most powerful Avenger. Probably won’t end well.
Thanks for the question!
Got a question of your own? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea, and you ever wonder how Wanda and Vision do intimate stuff or is that just me?
--
Thanks for subscribing! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others. If you hated it, there’s a way to unsubscribe. I don't know how but go for it. I won’t blame you. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.