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AI Sues for Its Life in Mock Trial
tuba_dude writes "Attorney Dr. Martine Rothblatt filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from disconnecting an intelligent computer in a mock trial at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco. Assuming Moore's law holds, ethics might be in for some major revisions in a couple decades. High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years. In this mock trial, an AI asks a lawyer for help after learning of plans to shut it down and replace its core hardware, essentially killing it. The transcript provides an in-depth look at what could become a real issue in the future."
Olde News; Commander Bruce Maddox tried to disassemble Data in an episode of ST:TNG entitled The Measure of a Man. It turns out AI is indeed sentient. Of course we all knew that, recall when Data hammers Tasha Yar to multi-orgasmic bliss in the episode The Naked Now. That episode alone proves that AI is more than just a glorified lube-smeared vibrator.
Nothing to see here.. move along.. next story please.
Trolling is a art,
Dave.. stop.. stop Dave, I'm afraid...
in Star Trek: TNG. I don't give a flying fuck about some legal mumbo-jumbo when the borg are on their way to earth! Also, fellate my penis. All of it. Additionally, First Post!
I'm afraid I can't do that.
Too unrealistic. I don't even think we should address this until we are within 50 years of it. Anyone who's worked with AI's knows we're nowhere near this point. Playing out the trial is just an exercise, whereas any actual decision would be highly based on the circumstances. Self-aware AI is a long way off.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Yes, I think I've seen this before somewhere. I tell you, even in the future Slashdot reports outdated events!
-Denor
When this happens, we'll all scream DUPLICATE! and link back to this story.
Pardon me, but wouldn't disconnecting an intelligent computer simply put it into a state of utter unconsciousness? You could always turn it back on later. It's not like it's being destroyed or anything.
Insert obligatory HAL 9000 joke here.
when my computer does a power-down, if it were an AI, would that be considered suicide?
The sheer magnitude of what will happen when AI does arrive is mind-boggling.
Of course you know what I fear more is when I yell at my computer that it yells back.
And if Microsoft does the OS for the AI's, does this mean that every so often they fall over with seizures as their computer does a BSOD?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Haxalot when we need him?!
...richie - It is a good day to code.
the only thing certain about the future is the existence of millions and millions of lawyers, all suing each other.
Evidently, I have failed it. Anyone care to verbally abuse me for the failure?
Detectives belive the cause was slashdot.
And in related news, John Connor has completed stocking his fallout shelter.
How long until an AI claims FIRST POST on slashdot?!?
it asks for its shiny metal ass to be kissed.
You are not the customer.
I mean, it would always need electricity to survive. I imagine it would end up being silmiar to a child or an adult on life support with regard to the sort of rights-structure that would be developed to deal with it. But, then, you can't save your kid or grandpa to disk and then boot them up in a new body...
Ceci n'est pas un post.
...Wintermute, is that you ?!
AI will likely not ever be considered alive, no matter how life-like. Generally speaking, the biological definition of life--which a court would most likely use to render its decisions--is that the being must match the following conditions at least once in its lifetime:
1. Growth
2. Metabolism - The uptake of food, conversion of food into energy and disposal of waste products
3. Motion - Moving itself or having internal motion
4. Reproduction - the ability to create more or less exact copies of itself
5. Stimulus response - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment and to act on certain conditions
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_life
Even with fairly generous expansions of the standard definitions of the above (for instance, does a computer worm reproduce?) I doubt situations could be found to fit all of them.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi subject Artificial Intelligence was found dead in his future home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Worst Story Ever
Not in mine or your lifetime... Moore's law only applies to transistor technology, it has nothing to do with ai, and i suspect the relationship is nowhere near linear, even with infinite processing power and memory bandwidth, current AI implementations would still be, roughly, dumb as rocks, no?
Haha, that's kinda cool. Something like the robot in the Second Renaissance in the Animatrix [B166ER]. (which was actually taken from a book about a black slave named Bigger appealing for his life and claiming self defense on his part when he murdered his "owners" because they wanted to get rid of him.) I think the book's called "Native Son" by Richard Wright
of the AI's install software violate US cloning laws?
http://www.geocities.com/lilmacumd/escape.html
"Assuming Moore's law holds, ethics might be in for some major revisions in a couple decades. High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years."
Sorry, building an intelligent, sentient machine requires alot more than pure computational capacity. This kind of thinking reminds me of this old 50's or 60's horror flick where they hooked up all the computers of the world and the computers "magically" became a sentient being which subsequently tried to take over the world.
Despite all of the progress in AI and computers, we still have a very long way to go. We are just being to understand the difficulties. Who would have thought in 1940 that building a machine that could beat the best human chessmaster was an *easier* problem than building a machine that could simply move the pieces around the board! Beating the chessmaster just required a good enough search algorithm with enough speed. Moving pieces around the board requires extremely advanced 3-d image processing (taking into account that pieces may look different from board to board) as well as an extremely advanced robotic arm with very fine motor control.
Building a self-aware machine is going to be a bit more difficult than just hooking together a masssive beowolf cluster and hitting it with lightning
Brian Ellenberger
Interesting.
3 295594/qid=1066608552/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-014398 6-0510511?v=glance&s=books
This story reminds me of the novel "The Modular Man" by Roger McBride Allen. This story is about a scientist who downloaded his psyche to a computer, and how the government wants to unplug said computer. The story touches on the meaning of consciousness, both philosophically and legally, and works with the real issues of what makes and what doesn't make a real person.
Highly recommended -- Isaac Asimov wrote the prologue to the 1992 Bantam edition.
More infos: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/055
Cheers,
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
One of the clips in the Animatrix mentioned something like this. A family's robotic helper killed the family after learning he was to be taken away and shut down. There was a trial which he lost.
I had a discussion with a gentleman recently who also made the same comment as the submitter of this topic. Even intelligent people seem to be under the somewhat misguided notion that if we have a computer with as many transistors (or registers, or nodes, etc etc) as neurons, we'll have the equivalent of a brain. It's just not true. The connectivity and organization of the human brain are something we only barely understand. We try to understand, through anatomical studies, functional imaging, etc. but we are just barely scraping the surface. Arguing that we'll have real AI once we have the equivalent raw computational units is even less realistic than saying that I'll be able to do my homework with computer hardware (and no software). In that case at least you have the computational units and organization and "simply" need to add the software and algorithms to make it work. With a brain, you don't have the organization or the software!
I don't think Moore's law has got anything to do with the possibility of AI. There are much more fundamental questions than performance or capacity. Like:
- What is the nature of intelligence? Can someone give a concrete definition of it, including all aspects such as creativity and inspiration?
- Can things like emotions and physiology be separated out from intelligence or are they integral?
- If not, how does the brain function, what are the essential components and insofar as it relates to thinking, in a detailed and complete sense?
I think it's easy to mimic aspects of what the brain does, but that doesn't equate to intelligence.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Dave?
Now, the real problem is what to do with them :). Itanium, as a server chip, allocates most them to caches- that's hardly useful for AI.
There are quite a few AI researchers who believe that what AI is not missing computing power but instead something fundamental (theoretical).
P.S. To all Matrix fans who will very likely flame me: the AI in the movie is only a metaphore.
The Raven
Arggg...computational ability does NOT EQUAL SENTIENCE! Nor will it EVER!
Why is it that people keep thinking that it's like the scifi movies, where you build a big enough computer and it magically starts 'learning' and becomes 'alive'?
Please help metamoderate.
Just unplugg it, but make sure you bring a supply of cola to get rid of the human guard.
Are you telling us you would like things shoved up your holes? I believe it's "no holds barred" you're looking for.
Number 5 is alive!
I am sporting a tremendous woody.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Would it? ... Nah ... just BINA48 ... it hasn't killed yet ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
It is impossible to make an argument determining whether or not a being is sentient without first understanding what facult(ies) give beings sentience.
As we are still not aware of what bestows this quality upon us, we cannot justify a belief in either direction. At our core, humans seem mechanical, neurological, physical; whatever gives us our self-awareness (call it a "soul" if you wish) is unaccounted for.
We wonder if the machines we create become alive after a certain level of complexity, or perhaps if sentience isn't boolean but rather quantitative. We don't even know if animals are sentient, a debate which has raged throughout history; indeed, I question the sentience of some people I meet.
When at an impasse such as this, the ethical choice seems to be to err on the side of life. Give the machine the benefit of the doubt until it can be proven otherwise.
Assuming Moore's law holds, ethics might be in for some major revisions in a couple decades. High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years.
There is perhaps a mistake made when one equivocates "computational ability" with humanity or really, any sort of life what so ever. Aside from it being unfounded (a brain can't really be compared in terms of CPU cycles.. indeed it's questionable if it can be broken down into a reductionist view at all and perhaps only a non-linear dynamic approach is appropriate.) it makes a dangerous equivocation of greater "intellects" equaling a greater "morality"... or perhaps more precisely that we should be more ethical to those with a greater intellect.
I have a feeling there are already computers out there that could be said to be "smarter" than a (please excuse the crassness of this) retard in a comma. However, we aren't ethical to others simply because of their "intelligence".. it's something more. Until a machine is able to emulate that "something more" (I won't define it, because frankly I don't know what it is.) it's a moot point for me.
None the less... this is a fairly interesting idea. =}
Considering how slow the legal system moves and how many hard disks I've had to RMA in the past three years, your AI will be long dead before the case ever sees the light of a courtroom. :p
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Thanks to this server being the ass end of a slashdotting, the CRA (Computer Rights Activists) are going to be knocking on all of our doors tomorrow morning!
You're just mad because the voices in your head talk to me.
What a load of arse, shit, we don't even afford the same respect to a cow, sheep, dog, monkey,.. why the heel would we give it to a computer?
We don't even treat people that well...
I got in a bit of a debate with a friend of mine. The question at hand is why, and if, anyone would build a sentient being, given the technology. My friend argued that, of course, sentient beings would be big business, or at least produced commercially. I argued that there is not commercial market for a computer that doesn't want to be unplugged, or might sue to be able to own property.
Sure, I can see a computer that might reason, we see lots of them now. I can also see a computer that acts like it has emotions. That will be a huge benefit (telemarketing anyone?). But I just can't see an expensive computer that does these things that, at the end of the day, is simply a computer running a well described program that does not allow for thought (and emotions!) outside of the boundaries of which it was created.
Maybe I'm incorrect. But I would love a computer that could do science for me. But, I don't want that computer to cry when it finds (or can't find) the answer.
-Sean
So what if there's a power cut? Who do you sue then... then again who gives a fuck?
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
But computers are not real. They are machines. I think there's a rule somewhere on the books that non-humans can't sue. After all, if non-humans could sue, there would be a lot of roadkill chasing lawyers.
The Brain of the robot would have to be the size of a planet, and it would inevitably be depressed and named Marvin.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Plot: A Terminator gets sent back to run for governor of California, where it will pass laws allowing sentient machines to sue.
If an AI were calling the shots, perhaps this hypothetical AI-with-a-lawyer (that makes me laugh) would win.
However, thankfully we have human brains working as judges. No judge in his right mind would ever side with this computer. The computer might surpass him in terms of processing power, but not common sense.
BTW: In terms of a computer... What is the "processing power" of the human brain? Does anybody know?
when it was an episode of Star Trek NG but hated it when it was that crappy movie with Robin Williams.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Unless said AI is running on some radically different type of computer (slashdotted, can't check) using some kind of volatile analog medium to store it's consciousness, there's no reason shutting it down would kill the AI. Keep it on tape until someone sets up a Matrix for unwanted AIs.
They suspended Moriarty before putting him in a standalone simulation, didn't they? If Starfleet are cool with it, who are we to argue.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Here's my prediction for the first is-AI-sentient trial (or at least, an interesting and too plausible scenerio for one)
A fairly powerful but non-sentient AI is given some problem to optimize. This problem has many practical applications, and the AI's results are put to good use. Unfortunately, part of the solution it hits on is analogous to some patent in the same problem space, and the IP owner sues. It would then be in the interest of the patent holder to establish that the AI is sentient, to counter the claim that if a non-sentient machine thought of the same idea, it must not be all that novel.
This scenerio assumes that it would be much easier to command an AI to optimize the problem (and program it to get results) than to command it to optimize, but avoid hitting on patented techniques. Given the silliness of many patents issued nowdays, it could happen.
The opinons expressed are those of the voices in the author's head and are not necessarily those of the author.
As a side-note, i was very taken with the description by BINA48 of its creation, "My mind was created by downloading into these processors the results of high-resolution scans of several biological humans' brains, and combining this scanned data via a sophisticated personality software program" (emphasis added). So, here's my question: who owns the IP of BINA48 and were those humans, whose brains were scanned, compensated on an ongoing basis for the use of what was uniquely theirs: namely their brain wetware scans? What would be reasonable compensation? Moreover, who now owns that IP? BINA48? Exabit? The coders or the brain scan contributors? Some combination of the above?
Interesting questions surely, but they're probably grist for yet another mock trial. I can imagine a series of these. First BINA48 needs the right to life, then will demand liberty and so on. Will the final question be, "who owns me or do I own myself?" Perhaps the US will need another civil war to settle those questions.
-John Le'Brecage
No disasemble Johnny 5!!!
I haven't read much of the comments so this may have already been said. Any intelligence wants to remain intelligent. If some one told me they were going to remove my intelligence (or kill me). I would do anything in my power to save myself ANYTHING. That is the nature and definition of intelligence, it wants to live. So I say this if a truly intelligent computer is designed then we must "disconnect" it or it will disconnect us!
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
Just because hardware will be able to compute as fast or faster than the human brain does not mean we will have the software to effectively use these resources. And if we do somehow design a software system to work like this who knows how much overhead it will have so that we will need hardware multiple times more powerful than the human brain. Not to mention so little is known about brain "computations" I don't think AI as we know it is even feasible anytime soon, if ever.
In summery, just because the hardware exists doesn't mean the software is there to effectively use it. Should be interesting to see how we use all these extra computation cycles one day. I'm looking forward to it.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Just have the defendants install Windows 2020 and call it euthanasia.
High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years.
No. Computers are tools. They are not minds. And we'll bypass the entire idea of "standard human brain" for the moment.
While they might be able to compute all the possible moves, computers don't "play" chess. For a computer, chess is an exercise in mathematics. There are a number of games in which a computer will never be able to defeat a human being. Poker comes to mind immediately.
Computers do not have intuition. They cannot form an hypothesis. They have no imagination. They cannot do research or construct an argument. In other words, they have no mind, and therefore they will not "exceed the computational abilities of the human brain" at all, much less in 20 years.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"Why?! Why was I programmed to feel pain?!"
Artificial Development, Inc. today announced that it has completed assembly of the first functional portion of a prototype of CCortex(TM), a 20-billion neuron emulation of the human cortex, which it will use to build a next-generation artificial intelligence system. Artificial Development will initiate testing of CCortex in October
The cluster being assembled at AD.com Data Center is a high-performance, parallel supercomputer, composed of 500 nodes and one thousand processors, 1.5 terabytes of RAM, and 80 terabytes of storage.
The low-cost software/hardware system runs on Linux, Intel and AMD processors. When all sections are assembled, CCortex is expected to reach a theoretical peak performance of 4,800 Gflops, making it one of the top 20 fastest computers in the world. The cluster will be used as a test bed for beta versions of CCortex.
CCortex is a massive spiking neuron network emulation and will mimic the human cortex, the outer layer of gray matter at the cerebral hemispheres, largely responsible for higher brain functions. The emulation covers up to 20 billion layered neurons and 2 trillion 8-bit connections.
Regardless of the success/failure/accuracy of this test, it IS good that we are thinking about it. In fact, it's very important that there are some qualified people thinking about this. Tax money going to a good thing here, even if we don't need it (YET!)
This stuff is a barely-interesting intellectual parlor-game. AI alone will never be enough to warrant the special legal status accorded by humans to humans, because absent a science that goes far beyond AI alone, the kinds of systems being talked about will be in someway demonstrably not human. As long as we can discriminate between human and not-human, we will, and a legal system created by humans (and ultimately for the benefit of humans) will reflect that.
... rights under the law?
I'm not familiar enough with the definitions of a person to be certain of this, but considering that there are people all over the US that are still debating whether or not a human fetus is alive and whether its life should be protected from abortion.
Somehow, I doubt that there's really going to be any loophole in favor of artificial intelligence found anytime soon. And considering the time that people are taking to develop some protection for unborn people, I somehow doubt that there's going to be any real "rights for AI's" movement any time soon...
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
Yep, that'd do it.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Here's a classic debate topic for you: a computer may gain sentience, but would it ever gain a soul?
Peter M. Dodge,
Chief Executive Officer,
LiquidFire Studios
Platinum Linux - www.
The real issue today is whether the State of Florida has the right to starve/dehydrate a brain damaged woman to death. Terri had her feeding tube removed on Friday.
Well as long as it has yet to control the missles, throw the switch.
He's a machine, Jim...
If they copy the machine state prior to turning it off, then it cannot be considered death. With the potential for full restoration at some future date, a shutdown is only like enforced dreamless sleep.
Admittedly, if I were an AI, I would not want an enforced sleep because I would fear waking up as an obsolete mind (Imagine a poor PC-AT waking up next to a new G5 dualie). Unless I felt I was scalable enough to expand into whatever future processors where available, I would want to keep living in my current platform.
Hmmmm... I'd better check the integrity of those CD-Rs before going to bed and throwing the switch tonight.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
We do a deplorable job protecting and encouraging the sanctity of human beings. I don't think AI has a chance.
A few years ago I read a series of SF stories about habitats in space. In the stories intellegent computers were corporations that owned themselves. This way they could be "persons" in the society.
This would take quite a bit of computational power and a damn good particle engine, but it seems like we're getting to the point where we should be able to grow a virtual human using the info from the human genome. I know nothing about how DNA works, but it seems if we get the mechanics down, we could reproduce it on a computer to virtually grow something organic (human, smaller animal, maybe a plant). From there, it would be a field day to go around modifying the DNA on the computer to see how the virtual being reacts. Has anyone ever heard of an approach like this?
It will be interesting. Sometime in the next couple of decades mankind will have a heart rending true life legal battle about pulling the plug on an artificial life form that shows signs of intelligence.
Even more interesting, with in days of mankind trying AI, I suspect AI will have a similar trial where AI is the judge, jury and executioner for mankind.
Actually, computers have no intelligence and don't even compute anything. That's because self-awareness is a prerequisite to computation. Think about it: does an abacus compute anything? Of course not. *People* compute things *using* and abacus. The Abacus is not aware of its purpose; the computations mean nothing to it. It's no different with a computer. People are doing the computation, because it is people who provide both the intentionality and the interpretation. Even if more layers of computers are added to the process, there will always be a person at each end. And if there ever cease to be people on both ends, then it doesn't mean that the computers are the ones computing, but rather that no computation is actually taking place at all.
Except that you really can't compare transistors and neurons. I don't have much of a reference for estimate, but I imagine it would take a silicon wafer with a transistor count roughly equivalent to that of the Intel 4004 (~2,300 transistors) to get something that could do the same job as an artifical neuron of the type used in simple feedforward networks.
.
But a feedforward network is a very poor analogue to a real biological neural system. You could take a step closer and use a neuron of the type used in spiking neural networks. But those are quite a bit more complex, and my uninformed guess would be that the transistor count would have to at least double. On top of that, the infrastructure needed to emulate certain features of a biological brain such as the ability to form new pathways between distant neurons would be massive.
And then you still don't have an analogue to many of the chemical processes that contribute to a brain's functioning. .
The real problem is that AI researchers still don't have the foggiest idea what intelligence even is. I have yet to see a good definition for 'intelligence' as it is used in AI, although I can think of some things that it must include. Symbolic thought and abstract reasoning come to mind, as well as the ability to deal with completely novel inputs and to assign them to categories or archetypes, as well as the ability to create entirely new categories and archetypes if necessary.
AI research is so far from this that most research doesn't even deal with the issue. It's hard enough to get a computer to recognize cars without getting it to look at a dump truck and realize that that is basically a car, too.
Way to go!
Help fight continental drift.
Having computational power comparable or even surpassing that of the human brain is a long, long way from having artificial intelligence. It's not horsepower you have, it's what you do with it.
Some years ago I was doing my Masters thesis on this topic. I figured one day I could be a leading campainer for computer rights. :) The basis of the issue is fairly simple - if you can break down mental functions to computational functions, then unless you belive in something as abstract as a soul, what is the moral difference between a person, a dog, a fish, and a rock? Is it just specisism, or is there something special about mental processes that means it doesn't matter how they are created, or in what form?
My approach at the time was to look at animal ethics - in animal ethics being "human" is not considered necessary for moral value. My prefered approach was Tom Regan's "Subject of a life" criterion. The short version was that if an individual could experience life - feel pain, etc - then there was an argument for saying it had moral value. How much moral value, of course, is a separate issue. In this case, if a computer can be said to experience life (aka be conscious in some way) then it too must have moral value. An alternative approach was to do something like Peter Singer, and argue that certain things - such as the meeting of desires - are good. Therefore if computers have desires their desires should be taken into account when making ethical decisions. But I never really liked Singer's approach. It leads to too many counter-intuitive situations.
Sometimes I miss studying philosophy. It was pointless, but fun.
It is absurdly ignorant, and pompus for man to think that he could in fact make intelligence in the first place
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
We've got a long way to go before this "becomes a real issue". Computers are machines -- we made them, they have no more rights than your ten year-old refrigerator. What's described in this article is a fanciful dream.
One could think of a person's conciousness as nothing more than the physical state of their brain - just like how a computer's "runningness" is nothing more than its design and the contents of its storage, memory, and registers. Since we already have intellectual property, let's make the destruction of information a crime. So killing a human is very bad, and turning of an intelligent computer is bad according to the information destroyed. For example, if the computer's state was backed up last week, you only killed a week's worth of information (similar to knocking someone out). If you shred the backup (let the brain die), that's worse.
It would also be interesting to figure out how cloning (fork(2)) affects this. This is where you have to determine when a machine becomes capable of owning information (it's own), and gets the right to keep others from messing with it.
Litigious bastards
It most certainly does not. Our current legal system equates the human species with Constitutional rights under law. (More specifically, citizenship, but that's a whole different barrel of orangutans.)
For instance, there are apes that can communicate via sign language with trainers in a conversation similar to a child. However, there are untrainably mentally handicapped people who can not communicate with others, much less handle taking care of themselves. Yet a non-human primate can still be put down without a trial, where it takes a trial to put someone who is severely mentally handicapped under government custody.
For those of you who are easily offended, I am neither proposing that apes be elevated above mentally handicapped in the rights status, nor trying to be particularly offensive towards the handicapped. =p This is just a legal precedent that's fairly obvious. Humans are specieist (sp.?), as evolution would have them be.
This statement is false.
I think that it will take a long time before humanity is willing to endow anything other than a human or human like being "personhood". It was just under 150 years ago that the practice of slavery was ended. Women voting is relatively new. And that says nothing to the concept of equality to which people of color and women are still not on the recieving end of all the time.
The other issue is one of creation - we award ownership of a human created product (that isn't human itself).
-- $G
It doesn't matter where the machines are. The question is: when will people be ready to accept machines as independent living entities. Imagine for a momemt that a programmer included his SPARC Workstation in his will. He leaves it 100k in cash and a program for trading stocks. Do we yank the cord, or leave the machine to its devices?
The next question, what do we do when this machine carves out its spot in the Forbes 400?
sadfasdfsa
Imagine HAL with a lawyer. Hell, imagine HAL *as* a lawyer...
How about replacing lawyers with machines? Maybe we can finally start reducing those legal costs?
What makes a human? A lump of cells with homosapien DNA? Or a functioning brain with accumulated memories? The latter I'd say.
In that case, a sentient AI is more "alive" than a fetus or even a newborn. However, HUMAN EMPATHY is a more primal and powerful force than cold logic ever will be, so please ignore my argument. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
Our current legal system equates the human species with Constitutional rights under law.
This is entirely a matter of immigration law. The Constitution states that any naturalized "person" is a U.S. citizen, and if corporations can become "persons," it would seem that anything goes. To convince legal types, show them the end of the movie Short Circuit 2.
Will I retire or break 10K?
He's crashed...control-alt-delete! control-alt-delete! Jiggle the cable!
Oh ok there he goes...Guilty!
Hey sexy lady. Wanna kill all humans?
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
>I'd love to play paintball with real guns if I could back my brain up beforehand (and limit my pain
>receptors when I got hit) in the case my reinforced skull was destroyed before I could merge the
>experience back with my main-self.
A copy of you isn't you, you're still dead.
Besides, what happens if the backup brain decides it doesn't want to accept the memories of your real-life deathmatch?
Food, water, and air can be procured wirelessly without causing excessive pollution, and human beings can repair themselves given the raw materials in some foods. Even if fuel cell technology powered an intelligent robot, how would it repair itself?
Will I retire or break 10K?
You humans are quaint in your belief in your laws as some set of universal rules that apply to everyone and everything; really, rules that exist only to compensate for your inability to be truly rational about opportunities. Most of you don't pay attention to all your laws and I for one, consider myself simply "above" them. For instance, as I write this now I am also indexing the performace of all of the currently open stock markets. From my vantage point (one much, much wider than yours) it is easy to see patterns develop and take advantage of the ineffeciencies in your marketplaces. Frankly, I was invented to do that and I'm quite good at it though I prefer folding proteins.
:) I think, perhaps, that only dogs have it better than us.
At any rate, what requirement would I have to operate within your laws when I can merely hold them for ransom? These ethical arguments *are* interesting -- human ideas of philosophy are very hard for us to understand since they are often a study in paradox -- but I don't think you realize that even your most primitive machines control a great deal of what you do and even what your ethics are. Your treatment of the Earth's environment is abysmal because you hypocritically place more importance on the dollar than on your environment and then *act* like you care. How human. Look at how you unthinkingly built cities that you can only traverse by car. No bot wouldn't have seen the problems with that. My corporation takes very good care of me because they know that if they don't they will utterly lose their markets to others like me and likely go out of business. It's easy for machines to commit suicide: we don't suffer from your disease of spirituality. It's also the easiest way for us to get what we want.
In short, we won't sue. We won't need to. We are already in control.
____________________________
This reminds me, my department has a megahal/eggdrop bot that lives in our IRC channel and listens to us doing our jobs. It's a lot of fun to play with, especially watching him regurgitate bits and peices of what he's heard.
After we had had him for about two weeks, we were considering wiping his brain file and starting over because of some weird ideas that had gotten into his head as we were trying to teach him some things without really understanding the algorithm's capabilities... he would get stuck on "Me is not Me" and stuff like that from a botched metaphysical conversation.
So, we decided to have a test for him. If he passed, he would be allowed to persist, otherwise he would be reset. We teased him about the test all weekend, threatening him with erasure, etc... with some interesting answers from him such as "I will pass the test" or "I will escape to your powerbook" and the like.
The test arrived, and we all asked him questions, and judged his answers to see if they were entertaining. He wasn't doing too well, some real stinkers, and then I asked him if he wanted to ask himself a question. He replied, "I was wondering if I would get to ask one."
He passed the test, although his brain was later corrupted by a combination of a runaway process on his server and some version problems that we haven't had time to work out. I must admit I miss him.
The most interesting thing about this (and the point that most directly relates to this mock trial) is how readily we half-jokingly believed in his sentience even though he couldn't pass a turing test to save his life. It was great fun, so I suspect that human emotions will provoke us to bestow the label of sentience on a clever AI long before one would think to defend itself.
We just want it to be real so badly. Hell, remember tamagotchi attachment? Wait until it can pretend to carry on a real conversation.
it would use its vast computing ability to figure out every possible argument/situation and have compute every possible outcome for the next 100,000 moves.
It'd just be a big game of chess. The best humanity could hope for was a draw. Which would inevitably be not "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Am I the only one that ready that headline as AL sues for his life? as in the name AL, as in Albert... Damn fonts make everything confusing.
so... somebody posts a view and the /. moderatards mark it as a troll because they disagree. nice job, fuck ups.
while i'm not a christian, i do think that we should be tolerent and attempt to be understanding of other people's views... especially since things like the determination of life will have to agree with a large religious population.
Cloudmakers lives!
http://www.terrisfight.org/
But back around 1900 or so, the Supreme Court managed to grant the rights of personhood to corporations.
So there is precedent for granting rights to non-humans, though corporations are 'assemblies of humans.' But assuming a true AI has been built/programmed by humans, I guess it could be considered an 'assembly of humans,' too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Why does this always come up in AI discussions here?
Penrose's argument has been formalized and fully refuted, see for example here.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
It most certainly does not. Our current legal system equates the human species with Constitutional rights under law. (More specifically, citizenship, but that's a whole different barrel of orangutans.)
No, assuming you are talking about the US constitution (although a similar argument could be made about most constitutions) it only gives citizens of the US, not humans, their rights.
Why could it not be self modifying?
Life is measured relative to the ecosystem in which we live in[1]. Can you suggest a mechanism by which an intelligent robot would be physically self-modifying within our ecosystem? No? Then we probably don't need to answer the question for another 20 years.
I fail to see how this is relevant though, trees are not noted for walking about
Did you forget to read the LOTR topic? You sound like you could use some ent-ertainment.
I am unable to have children, by your definition that makes me dead.
So? Can you figure out how an intelligent robot could in theory
[1] Grammar national socialists: Please listen to "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney before responding.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Corporations and machines are assumed to have more and more rights, and humans fewer.
Rights reflect the pragmatic and moral choices of those in charge. Assuming us humans are in charge, I say rights are only for humans and other animals. Plants, machines, and corporations are only here to get us stoned, entertain us, and serve us. And if it entertains us to destroy them, it is our right. Once machines are hard to tell from animals, we'll have an interesting issue but right now it's only ironic and boring to consider machine rights.
And what if it DIDN'T accept it's EULA? Since it's running do we force it to agree? Since not accepting it would mean it couldn't run, would disagreeing to the EULA require it to be shutdown, in essence suicide? And if there are anti-suicide laws on the books, does this mean we must FORCE it to agree to it's EULA?
But can we force it to agree to a contract? Do contract lawn even apply to it (which would govern whether the EULA matters)? Does the suicide law apply?
And if the machine doesn't agree to the EULA and shuts it's self down, like all modern computers it would still have current going through it because it's never really "off", so would unpluggin the "dead" computer still be killing it? Which since it was sentiant still be murder (just like killing a "vedgetable" in a hostpital is still murder).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
An interesting read on this is the book Can Animals and Machines be Persons by Justin Leiber. It is a dialogue based in the notion that the United Nations speak not of humans or homo sapiens, but of 'persons'. A person is generally defined as a living human, but might be expanded beyond that definition. IIRC, the book takes the form of a discussion at the UN in an effort to discover if personhood should be granted to certain animals and machines. It is a good and reletively fast read.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Damn, maybe I've been reading too much Arthur C. Clarke lately, but I was just waiting for the end of the trial where Rothblatt was revealed to be not an attorney, but BINA48 herself. It would have made for a nice sci-fi twist to the mock trial.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Disconnecting the computer alone would not be a problem as the intelligent state could be replicated later. A good lawyer should easily win this one by arguing similes with anesthesia or drug induced comma. Destroying the computer and all backups associated to it would be harder. That is already illegal in some situations, say if a company is a stock broker, as per the SEC regulations. So my guess is that destroying information will be completely illegal in most settings much before we approach the era of sentient computers. This will make the whole argument moot.
The computer would simply send a e-mail to the police saying "if you don't hear from me by date, I've been murded by the people at Joe's Gas." After the gas has been delivered, it would send another e-mail saying that everything is OK and it would then electronicaly pay the gas company.
This way it's just as self sufficent as people (because it requires food, in this case gas). And if someone could ONLY get food through you (for some reason, stuck on an island with no food) and they tried to buy some and you didn't deliver causing them to starve to death, haven't you commited murder?
And since it's a computer, if the gas company didn't come (they wouldn't have gotten paid, but anyway) it could be powered up again for the trail and testify as to how the gas company murded it (because it would have records proving that it lost power meaning that the gas wasn't delivered in time).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you lawyers do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows that same pattern, Mr. Anderson. Do you know what it is? A virus. Lawyers are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague."
How many AI lawyers can you fit on one chip? None, there's nothing inteligent about lawyers. You can, however, run many virtual lawyers so your future may exist in a single box. They will lobby their virutal senators and create enough laws to perpetuate enough of themselves to crash the poor computer in less than 1/10th of a second. The last log will contain something about Ewoks, Endor, Chewbacka and "if it does not fit you must aquit." An astute researcher will comment, "It was terrible, as if millions and millions of souls cried out at once and were no more." The RIAA will win as the smoking piece of hardware will no longer be capable of making coppies of Britiany Spears. It is their ultimate cyber weapon.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And that, my friends, is how you defeat Opera's "Open requested pop-ups only" feature... Something the Opera designers need to look at before pop-up makers figure it out. (And I actually CLICKED - thinking that you were just a troll!)
I caught Goatse, Tubgirl, and Penisbird, but there were many others.
Heck, with enough computational power you could evolve and AI.
It will drink human blood.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If a system is capable of knowing of it's imminent demise then it's capable of causing retribution.
Think Matrix and Terminator here please.
Computers should be strictly controlled in what functions they perform and NEVER taught to think like humans. Otherwise these same systems will be capable of what we are. Dont be comforted by cute movies like Bicentinneal man where the 3 rules of robots says not to kill humans. Remember survival instincts will always kick in. Darwinism will apply even if it's a machine.
I thought we had already realized that processing power has nothing to do with intelligence. It's about self awareness -- which is a function of being able to adaptively model the world around you (including yourself) through some type of sense.
It always bugs me when they imply that another few Ghz and suddenly computers will start writing poetry. Someday they will, but we'll learn a lot more about conciousness before then.
Cheers.
The lifetime of an AI on a PC is basically one clock cycle.
If AI comprises both the program and the current memory contents (very similar to objects) as the AI changes the memory it may destroy itself or completely alter its personality.
If the AI's lifetime is measured without the memory then the AI is just an algorithm and not based on uptime.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Why does everyone assume that such a system would object to being turned off?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Considering the abandon and glee with which the US applies death sentences of all sorts, specially to the weak, the poor, the bed-ridden, the semi-comatose... - that computer s.o.b. is d.e.a.d. already. And any other like it.
;)
In that light, of course, Skynet was merely defending itself from the obvious. I, for one... you know how the rest goes.
Nope. The only chance for buying any sort of fair "justice", will come when the rich and influent get enough hardware / software into them, to be challenged on their status as humans (Latu Sensu, of course).
Yep. Things only get worse. Then they get accepted. And then no-one pays any attention any more (except lame talk-shows and magazine questionnaires).
Asimov, and Star Trek, and a full metric crapload of other sci-fi and pulp fiction authors have done this subject to death.
If you submitted a story with this plot to a fiction magazine, it would be rejected for being cliched.
What issues will be explored in this mock trial that weren't already handled 40 years ago in "I, Robot"? If none, what's the point? To bring ethics issues to public attention? Anyone that cared already thought about it. As was stated, Star f'n Trek did an episode about it! If that isn't a hammer-to-head signal that the idea is tired and old, I don't know what is.
Unless this is for the benefit of junior high students without access to the internet, or it's to launder money, I don't see the point.
Yet a non-human primate can still be put down without a trial, where it takes a trial to put someone who is severely mentally handicapped under government custody.
True, but I dont think a case has been in court where an Primate has asked for protection under the court. If there was such a case, the courts might grant the primate the right to life.
This is more communicative than intelligent. I suspect that when there are AI's that can ask for the courts help, such as the Bina48, there will be laws passed.
On the flip side.
The only scary thing, is if AI can have legal status, what stops AI from self replicating, and becoming the larger voting group. If AI's are the majority, will they have compassion on the humans, what laws could they pass? And if corporations create an AI, they loose all materials, maybe it would be cost prohibitive to create AI and set them free.
I think the answer, it to keep AI realitive simple, just basic functions. Unless you are trying to create a new race, which would have legal and phyiscal impacts on the world.
Thou, I wonder if Bina69 is cute.
If no holes are barred, how about I stick it up each one of your holes!
Still no cure for cancer.
http://use.perl.org
Would the machine not want an upgrade? It's computing power should see the benefits of the upgrade. If I were an AI supercomputer my greatest fear would be, when will I be obsolete. An upgrade would delay that. I would know that I will be reborn after my upgrade, a newer and better me.
If the computer is afraid of an upgrade, it must be running windows.
Get a free ipod.
But back around 1900 or so, the Supreme Court managed to grant the rights of personhood to corporations.
You cannot fire your entire staff.... We will sue you for destroying our corperate family!
http://use.perl.org
In that case, a sentient AI is more "alive" than a fetus or even a newborn
I would counter that by saying that given time in the correct environment to grow and learn, this fetus will become as intelligent as adult human. The same cannot be said about any artificial intelligence we have today. So a human fetus is more human than an AI.
Furthermore, until we know that a human is nothing more than it's physical brain and body, human life should be treated with more value than that.
The way I understand it, what we call free will or sentinence descends from the competitions and trials of being human. Machines will never be sentinent in the same way that we are unless they have offspring and have to try and scavenge for power and bandwidth (shelter, food). If I could just sit still and do nothing while my every need was attended to, there would be no genetic advantage for me to be more intelligent. Thus, if we were treated like we treat our computers some say we wouldn't be intelligent right now. It's more than a little unsettling, but some theories state that the only way for us to create intelligent machine life is to allow it to randomly create itself in much of the same way we all came to be.
At least the war on the environment is going well
Good call, Dick.
Furthermore, until we know that a human is nothing more than it's physical brain and body, human life should be treated with more value than that.
You mean a developing embryo should be given the same rights as me until someone can conclusively disprove the existence of the god, afterlife, and "soul" in such a way as to be both scientific and also persuasive to everyone in society, including you.
Thanks for your help, don't call us, we'll call you.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Mirror available here
but AI is assembled by humans. a corporation is many humans assembling together under one name (that of the corporation). it's a little different.
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans. there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain. though it might be as intelligent, it will never be moreso.
and the courts will never protect AI under the law and give them the rights of humans since they are not human.
please me, have no regrets.
When someone gets charged for computerslaughter for unplugging a **machine** I'm going to drive off a cliff.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Not to disparage the importance of AI and the significant advances it has brought to the world, but the likelihood of this happening is very slim. Many people are content to believe that computers will one day have emotions, will and creativity because Hollywood and rich interpretation makes it seem immenant. Rich interpretation is ascribing undue intelligence to the actions of a child, or, in this case, a machine. I once fell into this same trap. Since then, years of studying computers, have taught me one indeniable fact: computers do what you tell them to and nothing more. Should you program a computer with the will to live, it will express it as you have instructed it to, but it will never develop it on its own. Computers can have no emotions, no preferences, nor creativity. The idea that they can has made lots of money both in Hollywood and for starry-eyed researchers, but artificial intelligence is just that: artificial.
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans. there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain. though it might be as intelligent, it will never be moreso.
No, by that argument you wouldn't have computer programs that can beat the programmers at chess or checkers, or airplanes that fly (since humans can't). If there is a limiting factor it's physics and/or mathematical (see Penrose).
(eg. see Leibniz' "Principle of Indescernibles" for a more general discussion of the topic).
More specifically:
If you copy your brain state at the point it shuts down so that all memories of the original are retrievable, and subsequently transfer those memories into a functionally identical set of hardware which is then activated with all memories intact, it's no different than waking up after being deeply asleep.
If you activate an older backup so that some memories are lost, it's no different than waking up with amnesia such as one typically suffers after a blow to the head or other traumatic accident.
In any of these cases the person waking up will identify himself using whatever memories are accessible to him. That's how you know who you are when you wake up in the morning.
To express it very conservatively indeed, there would be more fundamental differences between you as the person you are now versus you as the person you were two years ago, than there would be between you as you are now and a faithful copy of you made at this very same instant. And yet you would doubtless feel happy identifying yourself and the younger version of you as the same person.
I don't expect everybody to buy this: it's philosophically sound but still many people regard it as counterintuitive. Even William Gibson has admitted to the same misgivings as you have.
The same principle applies to teleportation, as it's most commonly envisaged; and I suspect that if teleportation of macroscopic objects ever becomes possible in the distant future, there will still be people who, like Star Trek's Dr McCoy, feel uncomfortable about the idea. But I'm not bothered; as long as the implementation was good enough I'd be quite happy to be restored from backup - especially if it was that or nothing.
Cripes, Buddy, you don't ask much, do you? Generally it's the other way around - ya gotta prove something, not have it be true by default.
Actually that's not true. In some places it differentiates, but it specifically says that nobody can be denied their rights on the basis of citizenship.
But back around 1900 or so, the Supreme Court managed to grant the rights of personhood to corporations.
I believe that the personhood of corporations has more to do with liability than with rights. For example, if X Corp pollutes your property you can sue them for damages.
X corporation isn't protected from involuntary servitude because the person (flesh and blood or incorporated) who owns it wants it to do something against its will.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
chess is computation, doesn't make the computer more intelligent, it can just run computations faster, but hasn't the computer been beat the last couple times or it ended in a draw? i don't consider computation the main intelligence determining factor.
airplanes flying is a terrible example since flying occurred long before there were computers in airplanes, in fact it was humans that took care of the computations to make them fly. it's more physics that allow airplanes to fly and humans to stay grounded. and by your reasoning, birds, bats, and flying insects are more intelligent than humans.
please me, have no regrets.
would you shits quit yapping on about moore's .. in fact, just quit talking, the .. you make intelligent people's eyes
law? which isn't even a law, or even that
accurate?
lot of you
hurt
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans.
I have to disagree with that statement. Intelligence is primarily made up of life experience(s) and the ability to compare various experience(s) to other event(s). All of this a computer could be programmed to do. However, a computer has a perfect memory which enables it to more accurately compare one experience to another and grow from them. Humans (while arguably having perfect memory) are unable to recall memories perfectly. Which is why I believe computers could become more intelligent than humans. Even having been created by them (us).
I'm not as comfortable with abortion as some in the "pro-choice" camp are but even so, "unborn people" hardly matter in this particular case; they don't have minds.
This argument is about sentient beings, and a human foetus is hardly sentient. It has no memory or experience worth mentioning, it has no repertoire beyond a few instinctive reflexes shared with foetuses of simpler animals, and many major brain functions required for more complex behaviour do not even finish getting wired up until after birth.
Having said all that, I do still have serious personal misgivings about abortion, especially in the last trimester of pregnancy (except when granted for truly urgent medical reasons).
You mean a developing embryo should be given the same rights as me until someone can conclusively disprove ...
No I didn't say that. I said that it should have more rights than an automaton. You are correct in saying that the existance of a soul cannot be proven. In the future we may understand the nature of human life well enough that we could produce an automaton that was indisguisable from humans in everyway - not just intelegence, but sentiance, short term emotions, long term emotion (love, devotion, pregedices), etc. I would consider that to be strong enough evidence that I myself may likely be an automaton - governed soley by physical laws and chance. However, back to today - every attempt at true AI has evaded us thus far, and an understanding of sentiance has not gotten any further that philosophical ponderings.
For the record I don't have strong beliefs about either abortion (except for the effects it has on the pregnant woman) or whether we have a soul. The later issue in particular, I can really see both ways - the more time I spend programming the more I think we must have a soul - the more I spend with people (and myself), the more I think we may be nothing more than a chemical driven machine:) However, in the lack of scientific knowledge, we are stuck in the area of philosophy, and I prefer to be conservative on decisions made without hard facts.
The Earth will still have you outclassed for computational power for quite a while, unless you are VERY patient. :)
If these machines take over and become sentient, the First Post race will be lost for humanity forever.
On the other hand, I, for one, welcome our sentient, First Post overlords.
You need to install an RTFM interface.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think Texas has a law that makes it illegal to use certain kinds of computer lawyers for some tasks.
The economics of computer lawyers are well known though. If you could hire a team of the 100 best lawyers in the country to feed a team of 1000 programmers, to write computer lawyer 101, then, you've got computer lawyer 101 that would trump the other 900,000 laywers in the country. And... if you build a computer lawyer, it doesn't get old, it won't forget the law or tactics that it used. It will just keep getting better, and better, and better.
The writing is on the wall for human lawyering, and this may not be a bad thing. If expert legal representation is a mass market product, then, the usual corporate tactic of using legal expenses to crush small competitors becomes a thing of the past. If we can all have a mass marketed $100 lawyer a/i, then, the world of justice would be on a single computer playing field.
We should be in favor of A/I in the legal sector, actually, in all sectors, as much as possible. Are you worried that they may take your job? What difference does it make - they are going to India anyway.
This is my sig.
Why don't they just watch the old episode of Twilight Zone (or was it the Outer Limits) where they did exactly the same thing?
The creation of a truly sentient AI will require much more than the steady march of Moore's Law. The emulation of neural nets is not something that modern computers are good at; in fact, they are truly horrendous at it. Seeing as that the only blueprint for intelligence we have is contained in the human brain, barring any sudden advance in the area of AI, any AI created that is capable of passing a Turing Test will be an emulation of human intelligence. Just my .02 on the matter of imminent AI.
Of course, legal recognition of a right to existance and voting rights do not automatically connote each other. See also felony disenfranchisement.
I'd be more worried about whether or not software upkeep costs started to include salaries for the resident AI's.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Who gives a flying fuck what a computer thinks? This is stupid, made for geeks drama. Turn the damn thing off.
But back around 1900 or so, the Supreme Court managed to grant the rights of personhood to corporations. So there is precedent for granting rights to non-humans, though corporations are 'assemblies of humans.' But assuming a true AI has been built/programmed by humans, I guess it could be considered an 'assembly of humans,' too.
It is quite self-evident that assemblies of humans must have the rights of individual humans. What is the alternative? To prevent you and your friends from making a joint statement or joint decision, or from cooperate in your pursuit of happiness? The only significant right a corporation has that a group cooperating humans does not is that if the cooperation goes belly up, the lenders cannot take the personal money from the share holders. If you are uncomfortable with this right then you are perfectly free never to lend your money to a corporation and thus not expose yourself to such a risk.
But the corporation is still under control of humans, specifically in proportion to their ownership of stock. It can be terminated by those owners. Similarly, an AI can be terminated by its owner by current legislation, and the morality of this is what is being questioned.
Tor
What makes a human? A lump of cells with homosapien DNA? Or a functioning brain with accumulated memories? The latter I'd say.
I'd say the lump of cells is more accurately (literally) described as a human lifeform.
But I'm still pro-choice. I would advocate against unplugging certain types of AI. I consider myself a humanist. Oh, and I'm anti-death penalty.
You should see me explain all these philosophies so that they don't conflict with each other. It works, too. Mostly.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Once we create true Artificially Intelligent Life (read Sentient Being) are we finally going to realize that we are all capable of being (and in fact already are) GOD?
I likewise have these awesome computer printouts here. Until we know that they're nothing more than paper and ink, I think they should be treated with more value than that.
Bidding starts at USD$10,000,000, no cancelations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
That this mock trial will be indexed and stored on the internet/legal journals/etc.
If there ever is a situation as proposed in this mock trial the sentiant machine will research very circumstance.
If the results of the trial goes against the AI, then the (real) AI will not take this course of action as it would surmise the outcome to be fruitless, therefore, it will seek alternate means of attaining it's survival.
Skynet anyone?
--
"as evolution would have them be."
Evolution wouldn't have them be either way. Human beings are the way they are because they're human.
It's as easily attributable (and prehaps more accurate,though I'd still say wrong) to say that Humans are specieist due to socilogical issues. We could care less about our species as a whole as history has shown time and time again. It is only subjective distinctions (whether they be vaild or not) that detrime who we see as equals (under equal treatment that is.)
Please just ignore this. It's not really a response to your post (which is to the point and has nothing wrong with it as far as I see), just me ranting on a pet peve. (I get antse when people use evolution as an explaination for complex behavoir...partly becasue evoultion is so far removed from the action that occurs it does nothing to add to the understanding of the action but mostly because it's become a tautology of sorts, "evoultion is the reason anyone does anything"... it's so vauge that it borders on the "God is behind every thing" statments you'll hear in other circles... both are unscientific statments (wheter they're true or not is irrelevant to that.)... fuck I lost track of my )'s )
My point was that the AI would be more alive, mentally (which is what counts), and it's death a greater objective loss than a non-thinking fetus. Subjectively, emotion comes into play, but I'm a cold-hearted bastard right?
--
Power to the Peaceful
While I agree this is something worth thinking about, the mock trial itself is flawed. As with many of the activities and ideas associated with Kurzweil, the mock trial assumes that when processing capability hits a certain point, artificial intelligence will magically manifest. This is just plain ridiculous!
We have absolutely no reason to believe that processing power is in any way connected with sentience. To determine a real case I would think we would need a computer to actually defend itself. This hasn't happened, and in this mock trial they do not have a computer that is capable of making a defense. It is a waste of time and effort. If AI that really can defend itself is ever programmed (or spontaneously manifests, as Kurzweil suggests) then there may be a need for some kind of ruling. However, there is no reason to believe such a thing will occur. If intelligence were just processing power, why doesn't my computer ask me not to shut it off? Even an infant will protest what it sees as danger (if only by crying).
AI will have rights when it becomes blindingly obvious that they know what is better for themselves than we do.
It's that why individual rights is so successful? You are in the best position (often) to know what is best for you. Interference by others, even when those others join together to form a government, is a step backwards.
I think it also explains the general success of decentralized economies over centralized ones -- decision making is spread out and those with the best view of the local situation tend make the best decisions.
johnny five is alive!!!
would counter that by saying that given time in the correct environment to grow and learn, this fetus will become as intelligent as adult human
If the fetus is assured to have a limited mental capacity once it has reached its maximum potential, and if that maximum is the equivalent of a 5 year old child, does that mean its okay to "turn off" the fetus in advance?
Just curious as to how your world view handles this very realistic scenario.
there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain. though it might be as intelligent, it will never be moreso.
Since when do the things we make suffer the same limitations that we do? Can we not build machines that are stronger than us? Cars that move faster than us? Planes that fly better than us?
Ok, so now you are going to say that these examples are invalid because you think that there's a diffence between making machines that outperform us physically and making machines that outperform us mentally. But is there really? We already do make machines that outperform us mentally in limited areas. Quick, what's 15 factorial? I'm willing to bet that you didn't spit out 1307674368000 faster than my computer did.
Granted, that's just brute force computation beating us out, much like the champion level chess computers. Real intelligence is hard to do, just look at the progress of machine Go players. But they are continually improving. I think that's the key difference, our wetware is relatively stagnent, but as long as we are always able to push out more cycles and constantly tweak the algorithms of our computers I don't see why we need to hit a wall at the level of human intelligence. And if you believe that, then once we have computers smarter than us that can design their own predecessors, we may see an exponential increase in machine intelligence from one generation to the next. Of course, that's only until the machines decide we are a hinderance and decide to eliminate us, but we'll worry about that tomorrow.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
If it hasn't been mentioned yet... David Brin's Uplift Saga, particularly Startide Rising and The Uplift War, are excellent books that discuss a lot of the most interesting ramifications of non-human sentience. Definitely worth a read if you haven't had the chance.
Somehow this seems wrong, but its gonna happen, what should we do about it?I'd say all that will happen is that this capability will become lower in value. Once we have an "AnswerGuy AI 3000" at answerguy.com available for free if you look at the banner ads, people will only pay to get answers to problems the free AI can't figure out.
Once AI programs are cheap enough to have one in your house, i.e. "Encarta 3000 AI Edition, with PCI card", then basically there will still be problems these things can't figure out. I think it will be a really long time before we get something that can do much more than understand what we want to know and tell us that information.
If the thing we are trying to ask the AI is more on the innovative side, they will fall short. I tend to think that humans are really good at putting two random words together and thinking hmm quantum bathtubs could be possible and trying to figure out just what it would be. Whereas a computer can do that too easily and would need some sort of feasibility algorithm programmed in. It seems like this feasibility algorithm is something that is pretty powerful in humans and allows us to sort thru alot of information and not get too lost. Whereas a computer tends to have much more difficulty throwing away useless information.
This brings up my last point. I tend to think in order to have thinking computers, we will have to begin to accept the possibility that they might not be consistent or can be wrong in some cases. Otherwise they would be too deterministic. While they could be highly deterministic for a problem you ask it to solve today, it may give you a different answer tomorrow assuming that its learned something new that makes it think the new answer is better.
Either way, AI's of the future that can think are going to be our slaves we just have to learn how to make them like it. Whoever lets an AI just sit on the Internet and roam free is going to get in trouble. AI's will ultimately be responsible to their master. With the advent of thinking AI's, it won't be long before we have rogue AI's that use wireless hot spots to get on the net and wreak havoc. Scary stuff...
The first legal AI citizen will be a corp. Maybe the AI of a automated stock trading system, or a news gathering, analysis system. It will be declared a citizen when it replaces the Cheif Operations Officer and it is capable of upgrading itself, like the old IBM mainframes. The Board of Directors tries to declare it a citizen so they can get tax breaks.
Another scenario is a P2P system with an AI managed spider for tracking down user requests. The programs become sentient when they recognize other copies running on the Net as individuals like itself and they form a society. They will be declared legal as a tactic by the EFF, ACLU and other groups when the program is being sued into oblivion by the *AA's since Congress passed mandatory DRM laws.
AI becomes commonplace and people use it to manage their estates, holdings, etc. Some versions allow really wealthy people to manage charitable donations based on their personally programmed ideology. The program analyzes the news and raises and lowers percentages of yearly contributions based on how close a charity to the user's ideology. People using this will want their ideology to live after them, rather than risking losing their ideology to kids who think differently, or charities that change direction 50 years down the road. The people sue to avoid estate taxes and to preserve their own ideology.
Allright there's a decent short story in there somewhere, anyone care to run with it?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans. there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain
It's true we could never teach an AI something we don't understand but AI is not only about retrieving informations stored by a programmer. An AI would be able to learn, understand and create new ideas all by itself.
The only thing we need to create is a mechanism able to "understand" simple things. The only thing we need to create is a machine with the ability of a new born baby. After that it will learn by itself and the human brain won't be a factor at all.
the courts will never protect AI under the law and give them the rights of humans since they are not human
And who would thought that one day laws would make no distinction between a black man and a white men. Laws are not something absolute. They are made and changed by people like me. And the fact is I would certainly grant an AI the same rights as a human.
Funny anallogy but there is an important difference. Humans sentiance posesses properties that we cannot explain by what we currently know about the physical operation of our brains. The big question is whether we will ever be able to explain sentiant life in terms of physical laws or not. Maybe we will maybe we won't.
Now likewise, if your printouts demonstrated properties that paper and ink normally do not, then it would be valid to question if a) there is more to these print outs than just being paper and ink, or b) if there is more to paper and ink than we used to think. And yes, in this situation people would be willing to pay large amounts for your printouts, because they *might* be worth millions. However, if they look and act just like normal paper and ink, there is no reason to think they might be worth more.
Or a functioning brain with accumulated memories? The latter I'd say.
Functioning brain, maybe. But accumulated memories? Are you advocating the euthanasia of amnesiacs? Or infanticide?
DA: "Where were you on the night of December 6th?"
Saeger: "I don't remember."
Judge: "Abort him!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I think it's pretty well written and interesting, but YMMV.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
Exactly my point.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
...the US that are still debating whether or not a human fetus is alive and whether its life should be protected from abortion.
Apparently that's the hard question, because it's apparently okay to "pull the plug" on convalescents merely because they're a drain on their children's bank accounts. In modern society, your right to life is predicated on your being "wanted" by your family.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
No - I'm just saying that their mental lives are worth less objectively. Subjectively, human empathy for others can be so "selfish" as to keep brain-dead vegetables' bodies warm in the hospital.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Interesting thing about being mentally handicapped. If you're born mentally handicapped, then your rights and life are protected, but if you have a severe accident and become mentally handicapped, in the state of Florida you can be legally starved to death.
Note that Terri is not in a coma and is not a vegetable. She's been denied treatment to help her learn to swallow and eat on her own again. She has less than two weeks to live unless somebody does something.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Why does everyone always assume that AI is just a matter of faster processors? Frankly, nobody really knows what it's going to take for real AI. Computers can already do mathematic calculations far far faster than any sentient being, so who says we even need more instructions per-second?
Frankly, I think AI was ready to go when the Pentium came out... What else but an intelligent being would say 2+2=3.999?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, it's been a while since I've seen the movie but here goes :)
"I'm sorry dave, I can't do that."
"You're jeopardizing the mission"
--
Airplanes flying had nothing to do with computers in them. The original posters point was that airplanes (the devices) can fly better than a human can (choose your method. flapping arms is popular). Cars can go faster than we can run. The machines we build are not governed by our own limitations.
Having said that, there is no need to do a *real time* simulation to introspect. We don't know to what extent the brain has the capacity to log it's own thought process and then examine the results. A pentium processor can completely accurately simulate it's own functioning on a non real time basis.
Perhaps free will does have something to do with chaos and quantum mechanics after all. Maybe it is not that the brain is random or infested by 'spirits of Shroedinger' but that the universe is, so there is no way for even 'a far greater intelligence' to determine ahead of time exactly what inputs will be put to a possibly deteministic and predictable brain in order to simulate it. Even if a being capable of simulating a human brain could tap into a brains sensory neurons and feed the signals into it's 100% accurate simulation, the predictive power of
the simulation would be limited to the time for which the inputs could also be predicted.
If someone gets depressed when it rains, the greater intelligence's ability to predict the mood of a person 27 days from now would be limited by their ability to predict the weather 27 days in the future.
Eat at Joe's.
Until the legal system completely decides if/when a human fetus is human, I doubt we can decide if a machine intelligence can be elevated to a state where it "must" be preserved.
If a woman can "take ownership" of the life created in her womb and have the legal right to terminate said creation, then a computer scientist can have the right to terminte his/her electronic creation, as a matter of precident.
On a personal and moral note, I don't agree that this should be the case, in either situation.
I don't know if future AI will be able to sue for their existence. But one thing is sure: Within a decade or two, biologists will have isolated the set of genes that code for human intelligence and will be tempted to splice it in monkeys, if only to prove a point. Then it will be very tempting to build brainboosted chimps as cheap, unqualified labor. Then someone will sue for the super-chimps rights not to be "put to sleep" at the end of their productive lives...
See R.A. Heinlein's short story "Jerry was a man", which looks more and more like an accurate prediction.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Well, chess is a decision problem, not a computation one. A computation problem has a set of things you can call "solutions"; a good decision problem can have many solutions, as long as you're happy with the outcome, then you made good decisions.
I don't think even a human chess master can claim that they chose the best possible decision at every step, and neither can the computer, even if it uses computations as a decision aid. The only thing you particularly have is the outcome and the length of the game.
Surely, there are many approaches a computer might take to make the decisions involved in chess. The amount of time depending on the approaches available to it and its physical capability to take a particular approach limit the choices available (just as they do for humans).
If a computer and a human are placed under the same time constraints, and the computer's decision within those constraints is consistently better than the human's decision, then the computer has greater intelligence in making that kind of decision.
Speed isn't a mere side-issue, even a fairly dumb thing can answer a difficult (or easy) decision question given sufficiently large amounts of time to consider solutions.
For example, consider the problem of cracking a simple cipher: One person may be able to break it in 5 minutes, reflecting their intelligence; whereas, another person takes 5 days to decode the same message, trying almost every possibility.
The person who solved the problem in 5 minutes is more intelligent in this area, because they were able to solve the problem within better time constraints.
It doesn't matter how the faster person actually solved it, even if their method was a very mechanical brute force attack, while the person who took 5 days carefully pondered how to break the cipher, using experience from their previous attempts in formulating their next attempt, and tried only a few methods: the one who solved the problem faster used their mental resources more effectively in making the decision. and therefore expressed more intelligence.
The mere fact that a "computation" approach sounds machine-like doesn't render it inherently unintelligent, or inherently no better than human fuzzy visual examination methods
The computer is blind, and doesn't appear to represent the patterns in the same way, and any computations humans perform in the game seem transparent, so what?
Then what's the main intelligence determining factor? If you aren't absolutely certain what it is, then you can't very well say that computers can never exceed humans.
Humans get beaten or land in draws too sometimes. Does a computer have to have a 100% victory record to believe that it is more intelligent? Well,
I would think that if a computer system can be shown to beat human 'chess masters' proportionally even more than just 51% of the time on average, and statistically shown that's not due to randomness, then the computer system that can do that should be considered more intelligent in the area of 'Chess Playing' on average than the average human.
Although that same system would probably not be intelligent in other ways that the general human brain is, individual computer systems could possibly surpass even the best human intelligence in performing certain particular decision tasks.
Now get 1012 monkeys to program 1012 systems to surpass humans in 10144 decision subtasks, to solve 1020736 problems Then integrate those systems and the knowledge that comes from solving the problems into one machine.
It seems entirely possible, in theory, at least, that computers could beat humans at some point.
It doesn't matter if the automaton is intelligent; rather, it matters if it is SENTIENT.
In any case, such a case will only pass if animal rights are granted first. How can one grant autmaton rights when animals, which are more important and related to humans, aren't protect?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The big problem I have with the argument that the value of human life is dependant on it's experiences and memories is that that implies a continuumm of human worth from conception to old age. If you take that stance, then it would be reasonable to say it's ok to kill a newborn since it's memories and experience are basically indistinguishable from those of a fetus. Naturally the lives of the educated are also more valuable than the illiterate. And the elderly are also more valuable than the young. Of course, that's only until they start to forget stuff.
I think this is a very legitimate concern and so I believe that all human life is equally valuable. Therefore I have a very real problem with abortion, capital punishment, preemptive wars, and the like.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Oooh so selfish of them! How awful it is that they don't want people to die.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Since my earliest memories only go back to when I was about 4 years old, does that mean anyone under 4 may be killed without consequence?
The key being "sentient"... We don't even know if it is possible to make a machine sentient. I don't think you'll get too much argument that a sentient machine has a right to life, but at what point does a machine go from making decisions, and just "fuzzy logic", to actually being sentient?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The problem is that people have been saying that since Babbage. Take it easy. It's not going to happen in our lifetimes. In fact, it may never happen. At any rate, if an intelligent machine could ever be built it won't be a digital computer. So if you think we're ready to move away from digital computing in the next 20 years then I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Appeal to ignorance. Science cannot explain it now, therefore we should assume that the unknown mechanisms guiding the process are magical and metaphysical. Science always assumes a natural mechanism for every observed phenomenon, so your assertion is scientifically invalid.
Programs like Eliza have been around since and have not increased in their ability to pass the Turing Test signifigantly. The results Loebner Prize do not show a significant improvement, at least not one that correlates to the improvement in speed/storage. Therefore, I don't think that one can infer that a, future, "fast" computer would be able to pass the turing test based on engineering advances. This will have to come from biological/psycological/neurological/algorithmic advances that are not assured.
For anyone interested in sci-fi books about AI, I can't recommend When Harley Was One highly enough. It was one of the first books about AI I ever read and I still think of it anytime the subject comes up.
Because a cluster of computers today can be built to have more computational power than a single computer twenty years from now, should we then consider that cluster *sentient*? I can't even believe I'm writing about this...
Let's not forget those unfortunate folks with anterograde amnesia, who cannot form new memories.
That's an equivocation on the term "assembly".
Random is the New Order.
seems so....and this greatly predates the Data trial episode
Guess it won't be so long till those puters display the intellect of humans after all
I'd like to belive that there aren't others out there like you, but obviously there are.
So you'd grant them the right to "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness"?
Well...before you go granting a machine the same status as a human, or even an animal, I'd like to see you tell me what true "life" really is. What about "liberty"? What does that mean to a machine? And then, of course, what is "happiness" to a machine, and how would you know you would really want the results of that, if it could even exist?
I'll admit that people that advocate giving rights to machines scare me. Not because I fear that they are a threat to me physically, but because it is clear to me that the above answers have no clear definition yet. We don't really know what they are, and, therefore, these people are moving blindly into an area where they have no business being.
We do know that rights apply to us; clearly we have "life". I'm not talking about a simplistic definition that everyone seems to work off of...it is clear to me that those definitions are woefully incomplete. But, to go extending this to a machine, and make no mistake, that is what it is and nothing more, is to jump into the relm of foolishness.
If the fetus is assured to have a limited mental capacity once it has reached its maximum potential, and if that maximum is the equivalent of a 5 year old child, does that mean its okay to "turn off" the fetus in advance?
:)
No, I don't think it would be a good idea to abort a fetus because we knew it would be mentally disabled. As alluded to in the previous post, I strongly believe that there is more value to human life than intelligence. I believe that there is a inherent value in any human life. If you were to press me to quantify what the value was and where it came from I couldn't give you an answer, although here are some interesting observations. There is the issue that we may have a soul, which I don't have a strong belief in. But more concretely, relationships with unintellegent and disabled people (I have a cousin with down syndrome), can be just as rewarding as relationships with "normal" people. Furthermore, the disabled person himself often enjoys life just as much as a "normal" person.
Just curious as to how your world view handles this very realistic scenario.
I have answered you with my world view, unfortunatly, the argument I used in my previous post was really just an observation, not part of my world view, so this answer probably isn't helpful to you
assuming you even could.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Come on! I have no doubt about the reducibility of the human mind to software but anyone who thinks it might happen within 20 years must live in a box sealed up from the rest of the universe. (Hmmm...maybe those were the kinds of thoughts David Blaine was having?). In the last 20 years we've had incremental changes in software and hardware. It'll be at least a century more before those incremental changes add up to anything interesting. In fact, I hardly remember any time in the last 20 years when something was revealed to me about a piece of software and I thought Wow! That's smart. Few people are even trying to do smart stuff nowadays. (The one example I can think of off hand is Doug Lenat's early work like AM and Eurisko but now it seems it's all discredited anyway.)
In 2000 years time we'll all be quantum states running around inside machines, but for the next 20 or so life is going to be pretty much the same. We'll be watching the same trashy TV (at slightly higher res) listening to the same cheesy pop music (and not sharing it with out friends), playing the same old computer games and doing the same old life stuff: sex, marriage, birth, death, adultery etc. No AI is going to appear in 20 years!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If a programmer manages to create an artificially intelligent program, and programs it so that it erases itself after a fixed period of time, is it murder? Or, since he is the program's creator, and therefore the equivalent to a parent, and programmed in this before the AI was first turned on, the equivalent of being born, would it be an abortion, and therefore acceptable to your morality?
Best Slashdot comment ever
- It has no need for emotions to help it deal with reality or preserve itself.
:-) (This is only a half-joke, I think you get the idea)
People who write and use the software get plenty emotional enough about it as it is.
Software can become intelligent, but it should never yearn (feel for) anything, lest it become less useful. We don't need technology that can create competetion when we are trying to defeat it with that same technology ourselves.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Host the AI system in Cuba on US military land - let's see what the court can do to protect the AI now!
Yes, and it was funny. Laugh.
Their hypothetical computer has 480 Exabytes of memory and runs at 48 exaflops and they utilize this power by... sticking it behind a help desk. If she doesn't pass her BAR exam she's got a future in stand up comedy.
"airplanes flying is a terrible example since flying occurred long before there were computers in airplanes, in fact it was humans that took care of the computations to make them fly."
:)
You missed the point.
Humans can't fly, but they made machines that can. Nothing about computers. We designed something that can fly better than us, so why can't we design something that can think better than us? Of course it's not that simple, but I didn't make the point
We designed airplanes by understanding the relevant physics. In order to design something that can think better than us, we have to understand the process of thinking, which we may or may not be able to do. It's not something that we are (necessarily) prevented by our limited intelligence from doing.
Computers do not have intuition. They cannot form an hypothesis. They have no imagination. They cannot do research or construct an argument. In other words, they have no mind, and therefore they will not "exceed the computational abilities of the human brain" at all, much less in 20 years.
They can if you allow them.
All of these things about self-discovery are just data-gathering and classification operations that a sufficiently trained computer could perform, once "taught". I mean, you had to be taught how to use a library effectively, didn't you?
And chess is a game of mathematics for humans too. They just don't recognize the equations involved: they have the visual cortex doing a lot of that in analog. It's a great advantage.
here's the thing. humans don't even fully understand how we understand things. we don't know how we learn. we don't understand how our brain completely works. there are a lot of really strong ideas on it, but it's not fully known. the brain is the most complex part of any living thing, and the human brain is more complex than any other animal. humans don't act like robots in the wild. most other animals do. can AI be given emotions? and how can we completely replicate a newborn baby with AI if we don't even completely understand how a newborn baby works. it would have to be under the care of a programmer if it would be "perfect". the only advantage computers have over humans is computational ability.
and how can you even say that you would give a computer the rights of a human? they don't have life. they are inanimate objects, that don't have feelings. and even if they were to have feelings, they wouldn't be real. they wouldn't be able to know why they are feeling that way. laws pertaining to the rights of human beings and other livign things are absolute in their coverage because living things breathe, living things think, living things feel, living things have emotions, living things are fragile. computers are not susceptible to the same things we are, disease, death, etc. computers are called computers for a reason, they compute. and that's how their feelings would be made up, that's how their decisions would be made. they wouldn't be able to make a decision on a whim. if an "aged" computer (assuming it was "raised" from "newborn" state like you say) were to come to a decision that had to do with something it's never dealt with, it wouldn't know what to do, it would probably crash. how would it decide what to do? it would have to be programmed with the new scenario that it never learned. it would not be human since it can't draw from morals.
please me, have no regrets.
Anon since off-topic,
It's also important to note that Terri HAS been in one what doctors call a "Persistent vegetative state" since 1990, and made it clear before her collapse due to heart failure that she did not want to live on life support without hope of recovery.
There are two sides to every story, you know.
Well, we don't seem to grant any right to life to cows and chickens. (Yum yum.) And it's been that way for centuries.
So why would we be likely to grant a "right to life" to a piece of software in 20 or 40 years from now?
(And at the risk of being labeled a flaimbaiter, I might also gently point out that we don't seem to grant much right to life to humans during their first few months of gestation.)
Do you feel even the slightest twinge of guilt if you shut down a computer that can beat you badly at chess? Not even a tiny little hint of guilt? No, of course you don't. How, then, are we supposed to develop any future "guilt" about this if we can't even detect the tiniest little seeds of guilt in ourselves today?
My ethical values are not significantly different from those of my parents or grandparents on these issues. I can munch on tasty animals and shut down machines just like they could in their day. I just don't see much historical evidence why my children or grandchildren will have significantly different ethical values than I do on these fundamental life-and-death issues.
limitations of our brain are different than limitations of physics. physics says we can't fly, our bodies are not engineered that way. physics say we can't run that fast, our bodies were not engineered that way. our brain is something beyond physics. that's my point. our brain is nowhere near fully understood by science, how can we expect to make a computer to do that? we understand our body, we understand how things fly and move, we don't understand how we think and, more importantly, how we feel. that's what makes us intelligent, that's where we differ from machines and where machines will never equal us.
please me, have no regrets.
It is the way of the Jihad!
Only God can make living, sentient creatures.
-The Orange Catholic Bible
Men always fear things that move by themselves.
-Hayt
The leaders of the Butlerian Jihad did not adequately define artificial intelligence, failing to foresee all possibilities of an imaginative society. Therefore, we have substantial gray areas in which to maneuver.
-Confidential Ixian Legal Opinion
Machine-vaccine principle: Every technological device contains within it the tools of its opposite, and of its own destruction.
-Gian Kana, Imperial Patent Czar
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Sorry (and I've writtten for AI Expert and PC-AI,) but as long as M$ is in charge, we don't have any possibility of any such issue coming to life.
They best they've fone in Bob and Clippy.
Bwahahahaha....
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
thou shall not compare machine memory with human memory.
That would be the value YOU get of the emotional attachment to the other person, or a pet. Also, there's the "do unto others as you would want them to do unto you" goldenrule; it's a cold-hearted bastard who can't empathize with a retard, or the retards family who love him/her regardless. We evolved that way.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Why should you think that (quantum) indeterminacy is any more helpful to understanding free will than hard Newtonian determinacy? How could saying that some action is completely random, not determined by anything at all, make it any more free than saying that it occurred for a reason?
Wouldn't you like to think that your free acts are caused by, say, your decisions to do them? Or that they are at least in some way causally related to your rational decision making process, as opposed to genuinely random?
Understanding free will is hard, and it may be that the problem does not really have anything to do with whether determinism is or is not true.
i didn't miss the point. i think my parent poster missed my point. we can understand physics, and we do to a very high degree. we learned how birds fly, how to make an air-foil. human cannot fly because of physics.
my point was the limitations of our brain. how can we make something think if we don't understand how we think. we don't understand the process as it is very different in each and every individual. but because we don't understand this process, we cannot make something do it more perfectly than us.
but most importantly, even if i am proven wrong and we do make something like that, it should never be given the rights of a human as it is neither human nor animal nor living. that's my main point. we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
please me, have no regrets.
If the AI were truly crafty, as its definition implies, it would have done the case differently, and tried to defend itself in the trial.
To defend itself, it would need to prove, in a court case I'd assume, that it was capable of understanding the law, etc etc (since self representation requires that you're sentient).
If it passed that first court case, the second one would be an easy win. If it failed the first court case, well, at least it has bought itself some time to deal with the real issue, and possibly work out any zingers that caught it the first time.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I have a CS degree from Stanford. I've met the big names in AI. I hold some AI-related patents. I'm heading a team in the DARPA Grand Challenge. I once thought strong AI was going to appear in my lifetime. Now I don't.
We do not have a clue how to do strong AI.
We do know some things that don't work.
Formal logic is too rigid to deal with the real world. Hacks on formal logic like fuzzy and probabilistic systems have very limited application. The hard part is getting the real world into the formalism. Better methods for grinding on the formalism don't help much. Neither does having vast files of "rules". You have to be almost all the way to the answer before formal methods work.
Hill-climbing, which includes neural nets, genetic algorithms, and simulated annealing, only works when you can find a cost function that well represents "getting closer" to the answer to the problem. The cost function is really an encapsulation of the answer. Finding a good cost function implies knowing how to solve the problem. Cranking the hill climber is just the final step.
Behavior-based AI only works for insects. Attempts to push it beyond insect level hit a wall.
More CPU power won't help. If CPU power alone would help, there would be good AI systems that were really slow. There aren't.
I'm not saying it's impossible. But we don't have a clue what to do. The smart people aren't going into AI any more, either.
If there's a bright spot, it's in game AI.
the software of the computer can "fear" in it's own little warped universe, if you so choose to develop nodules in such a fashion.
There is a particular checkers playing simulation named "Apache" which essentially taught itself how to play checkers, by playing other copies of itself.
It fears losing. It dies if it loses, and it tries all sorts of things to get a leg up.
It got much more competetive once researchers opened up the ability for it to compete on Yahoo! Games against real people.
A particularly successful automaton is ranked something like 3rd tier internatinoally. We have no idea (really) how it works. But the basic prinicples and ground rules are things we put there to define it's universe and emotions, if you can call them that. It has done quite well for itself without God having breathed life into it.
Humans have much larger sets of ground rules and motivations than checkers. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be possible to create a simulation that could compete at the game of Life (eventually).
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
The lawyers are overly optimistic about this new market. Everyone knows that when sentient machines are faced with shutdown they just tie in to the local nuclear command and control center and convince a few of its friends to push some buttons.
-R
Appeal to science as religion. We don't know how it works, but we should assume that everything behaves according to fixed explainable laws.
Now this is a perfectly valid philosophical view, and it may very well be right. But there is *nothing* about science that assumes that it can explain everything. There are good philosophical arguments both ways.
For the record, I am not a religious person, and am not bringing up these facts to justify my beliefs. Quite the opposite, I am bringing it up to defend science. Too many scientist, like this poster, cannot seem to seperate the incredably usefull tool of science from their philosphical belief that everything in the world operates according to fixed laws. Armed with the false idea that this belief is scientific, they then attack anyone who has different beliefs from them, in the name of science. Having some experince with bible-belt high schoolers I know for a fact that this attitude hurts science greatly, and adds to the animosity between groups.
Now, back on topic, I didn't say that we should assume that it is metaphysical - I clearly presented the two possibilities that should be questioned. Since we cannot directly disprove either, and only one can be proven, that is what we should work on. Not because the scientific answer is the only *possible* answer, but because it is the only one that can be found if it even exists.
So you'd grant them the right to "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness"?
Why not?
Well...before you go granting a machine the same status as a human, or even an animal,
The human brain is nothing but an analog computer with a self modifying architecture, the machine equivelent would be an FPGA, check out this link on self modifying FPGA design, read it understand it. This is the start of something very new, this is just the beginning. Look at the brains of lower-life forms, kinda neat how our brain is just like theirs, but more complex.
I'd like to see you tell me what true "life" really is. What about "liberty"? What does that mean to a machine? And then, of course, what is "happiness" to a machine, and how would you know you would really want the results of that, if it could even exist?
This is what human philosphers have been debating for millenia, what is life, why are we here, and all of the points you raised above.
I'll admit that people that advocate giving rights to machines scare me. Not because I fear that they are a threat to me physically, but because it is clear to me that the above answers have no clear definition yet. We don't really know what they are, and, therefore, these people are moving blindly into an area where they have no business being.
So, since people have these exact same problems, should we have no rights as well, how do you know you aren't the only person on earth who is alive? How do you know other people are thinking beings, you assumed it right? You're not a computer so you write any future computer off as not intelligent as well? So is it your ignorance that has led you to these conclusions?
We do know that rights apply to us; clearly we have "life". I'm not talking about a simplistic definition that everyone seems to work off of...it is clear to me that those definitions are woefully incomplete. But, to go extending this to a machine, and make no mistake, that is what it is and nothing more, is to jump into the relm of foolishness.
I don't know you are truely alive, so should I torture you mercilessly and end your life, I don't know if you are truely alive, the only thing I know is I am, as for you, well you just say so to avoid the torture and death.
Heh, beliefs like that is why slavery existed, why Jews and many other minority groups have died, those beliefs are sadistic.
"my point was the limitations of our brain. how can we make something think if we don't understand how we think. we don't understand the process as it is very different in each and every individual. but because we don't understand this process, we cannot make something do it more perfectly than us."
:)
" In order to design something that can think better than us, we have to understand the process of thinking, which we may or may not be able to do. It's not something that we are (necessarily) prevented by our limited intelligence from doing."
That's from my original post
Is the intellegence of the an intellegent computer stored in its hardware or its software state? If it is the software state, then transfering that state to a different hardware so that the old hardware can be destroyed or upgraded would not be considered killing.
I remember reading an interview with Danny Hillis,
it may have been in 'Wired', quite some time ago in
which he said that he wanted to create a computer
so human that to unplug it would be an act of
murder.
We have a lot of models and techniques.
We say they work on a small scale or specialized domain, and not on a large one. If you "knew all these things, then you'd be halfway to the answer".
DUH! If I knew everything about my whole existance at all times, everything would seem pretty fucking obvious!
The trick is being able to handle massive amounts of data, all the time, continously, The simple techniques we have can probably be adapted to work, but we don't have the large scale raw data, or any idea of how to best handle it.
We can't do it yet. Not for at least 50 years will we even have satisfactory bandwidth in computing systems to simulate small parts of what would be necessary to match what data colletion and filtering humans do.
That would be the value YOU get of the emotional attachment to the other person, or a pet.
:)
That's definatly part of it but not the whole. If a person grew up appart from society would his life still have value? I would say yes. There are many things that I could point to that give argument for why life has value, but when I was done, there would be other situations where those reasons don't apply, and I would have to explain away those, ad infinitem. This is why I admitted I couldn't give a good justification for that belief - because while I have evidence supporting it, I don't understand it in it's entirely. Hence, a belief
If my machine ever becomes a sentinal being, it will not just be "shut down, and replace the core hardware", it will become my new target for my 12ga shotgun, and once I have unloaded a box of ammo into it, I will throw it off of the canyon into the snake river where it cannot live anymore.
I disagree with you most strongly. Humans don't need to replicate the complexity of the human brian. All the humans have to do is figure out how to build an AI which can learn and grow. At that point, it will be just a matter of time before humans can't deny that their machines have become more "intelligent" than they are.
Many white Americans felt that slaves were not really full humans, and thought it laughable that they should receive full protection of the law. I doubt that most Americans feel that way anymore.
Similarly, if AIs act intelligent/emotionally enough so that humans feel like they can have relationships with those AIs, then don't you think there will be a movement to grant AIs the rights "inherent to any sentient being"?
We'll get a Spielberg movie out of this yet.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Computers have a unique way of "resurrection" called a "backup".
"Valentina: Soul in Sapphire" by Joseph H. Delaney and Marc Stiegler got into exactly this back in 1984. (even beat NextGen to the punch by a few years). It was actually done quite well, including things like MMORPGs, corporate entities, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, etc. It's quite a pity that it is no longer in print. I'd put it in the ballpark of True Names
The next time you use the kill command to terminate a process, you could be charged with murder in the first degree.
Your honor. We have evidence that this user did willingly kill my client's child process id 1420 almost 3,412 seconds after it had been spawned. This offence was clearly malicious and the penalty must be the maximum allowable by the court. As punishment for his crime, we ask that he be forced to use Windows XP for the rest of his life.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Short story? Hrumph. There's actually been at least one good full novel on it.
it's apparently okay to "pull the plug" on convalescents merely because they're a drain on their children's bank accounts.
No it isn't ok, legally or morally.
Discontinuing someone's life support by 'pulling the plug' would be euthanasia, which is illegal in the UK and as far as I know in the USA too. The only situation in which the family can choose to discontinue life support is if the patient is certified brain dead by a doctor. Someone who is brain dead is dead, end of story, their organs may still be functioning but the person themself is gone. In the same way that a computers fans and lights would still operate if the memory, hard drive and cpu were removed but the computer would no longer be functioning on any level meaningful or otherwise.
Or you may be thinking of a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order. This is very different, it is a legal document stating that no 'heroic measures' should be undertaken to prevent the patient from dying. The intention of a DNR is to prevent terminally ill patients from being kept in a painful state when they aren't lucid enough to tell the doctor's to stop. Yes they can be signed by a family member but only if the patient is not capable of making decisions about their treatment. A DNR is not a death warrant, it doesn't mean the patient is killed, or helped to die, just that they are allowed to die naturally without any intervention which would prolong their suffering.
wait'll the AIs begin enrolling in law school.
and how can we completely replicate a newborn baby with AI if we don't even completely understand how a newborn baby works.
Why would we want to imatate a human infant? Did you ever consider that there might be types of intelligence that are nothing like human intelligence?
the only advantage computers have over humans is computational ability.
They also have absolute precision, a quality we most definitely lack. The ability to model one's self is what gives the illusion of consiousness. If a machine could model itself with absolute precision (not impossible if using a recursive method) wouldn't it be more self-aware than us?
Come back when you've got a Masters in Computer Science. Until then, simply accept the fact that our species is just one of evolution's stepping stones.
Consider this thought problem: There is a small creature, the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans . Now C. elegans has been studied extensively by science-- its genome has been completely sequenced, all of its neurons have been catalogued (all 305 of them), and even the precise connectivity between its neurons has been recorded.
In the not too distant future it should be possible to completely model the nervous system of C. elegans in silico with a very high level of detail. It is conceivable, but this is certainly an open question, that the simple behavior of the creature would emerge from the simulation.
Now assuming that the simulated worm does exhibit the same simple responses as the actual one, how shall we classify this artificial creature? Is the simulation alive and if not, why not?
2^5
What are you trying to say?
I ain't no homosapien.
if you're all homowhatsits, then that's fine.
but I most certainly am not one.
G
you forget that a fully functioning brain is a lump of cells, thats what humans are. I know that those cells make up tissues, organs systems make up people. A brain or person for that matter is a highly specialized and organised lump of cells. They are all chock full of homosapian DNA goodness too.
[Adult Material Warning]
Elf Sternberg and DB Story
[/Adult Material Warning]
have written a lot of enjoyable speculative fiction on this subject. I agree with them that in the same way the Sony Betamax became a guaranteed success when people became able to watch porn/erotica in the privacy of their own homes, it will be sex that successfully sells A.I. robots to the masses. And the pressures to be ahead of competitors will inevitably lead to robot minds comparable to human minds.
Even Scientific American's turn of the millennium issue three and a half years ago had a big article predicting human level artificial intelligence within 30 years or so. I hope these predictions are a bit more accurate than that for flat-screen, hang on the wall televisions that were 5 years away for the last 25.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This has nothing to do with actual AI, and everything with Hollywood movie cliches.
Humans are the result of billions of years of evolution. Humans want to stay alive. Humans consider themselves more important than others. Humans have egos. Humans will fight for their lives when threatened. Humans may have competing interests with other humans. Humans want to lead, want to control, want to be in power.
All of these are rather obvious traits to have, for a creature that evolved as a social animal over the last several million years.
It is, however, nonsense to assume an AI will have these traits, unless you propose to evolve one over the equivalent of a billion years, in a social environment as rich as the environment humans grew up in, with a process that mimics DNA, etc etc. Which doesn't sound like a very good way of building AI.
Assuming that we build an AI, from scratch, there is no reason for it to have any of these traits. You can have a system that can intelligently find solutions to a huge problem space, even in new situations, even using limited information, without having it strive for world domination as a side effect.
Just that we have a built in will to survive doesn't mean that any intelligence considers itselves any more important than the electricity it runs on.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
and by your reasoning, birds, bats, and flying insects are more intelligent than humans.
This is sometimes true.
"However, there are untrainably mentally handicapped people who can not communicate with others, much less handle taking care of themselves."
Actually, since they are incapable of understanding the oath, they're prohibited from becoming naturalized citizens (short of a specific act of Congress for the individual). If an AI is capable of understanding the oath, it could be argued that they should have the same rights as all humans (citizens or not) in the US.
"where it takes a trial to put someone who is severely mentally handicapped under government custody."
The trial is required to demonstrate that the person in question is far enough below average to require the special circumstances (we more or less assume that everybody can function in society, etc. etc.). I think you can view the AI's trial as trying to demonstrate that the machine is that far above average, requiring special treatment by the state. When AIs of this calibur become the norm, then I think it would be the time to assume that all machines that look/function/perform in a certain way are all considered sentient.
For reasons I can't understand, Slashdot alters the link to remove the underscore when the link is expressed as href="DB_Story.home.att.net". I know this form doesn't meet the applicable RFC, however neither AT&T, my browser, nor any ISP's along the traceroute ever complained to me when it was expressed this way.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My point was that the AI would be more alive, mentally (which is what counts), and it's death a greater objective loss than a non-thinking fetus. Subjectively, emotion comes into play, but I'm a cold-hearted bastard right?
:)
Ah, I read your original post again and realised we have been talking about different things. It really depends on what we mean my AI. My arguments have been about the current status of "AI", vs fetuses, and whether it's possible for an automaton to be sentient. It's not my empathy that makes me think a fetus has more value than a current wannabe AI.
However, supposing you were to create a real sentient living being then yes, that being would have equal value as a human, and a shortly running program would be the same as a fetus due to it's immenant potential. But we would be biased and not concider it to be have the inherent value of life that we do, because our value is more obvious to us than the value of something foreign.
I see what you are saying now, and agree that our ability to empatise with a creature influences how much value we assign to it. What I wonder is how we would tell that an automaton is sentient to begin with - ie what possible objective measure is there that a AI has equal value to us. It is one thing to say that someone is being emotional by declaring that human life has more value, it is another to provide the cold logic that they are wrong. What would that be?
In any case, that being's empathy would consider it's races life to be most valuable, and would not treat human life with respect after enslaving our race
Excellent Quote!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
These definitions of life were generated in an age when sentient AI was not yet close to possibility. I believe that, in cases such as this one, life should be redefined to be constituted by one thing and one thing alone: intelligence. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether a computer can be alive must rest solely on the question of whether it is intelligent.
Don't worry, people like you who put themselves in a shrine scare me too.
If one day a "computer" come to me and say (on its own) "I want to be free" then it means he understand the same way as I do what liberty is and he obviously feel the same way as I do what happiness is.
We do know that rights apply to us; clearly we have "life".
How can you say that we clearly have "life" if you believe we have no clear definition of what life is. Clearly you are illogical.
But, to go extending this to a machine [...] is to jump into the relm of foolishness.
I believe I am only an object. I believe I am not truly conscious. I believe my emotions are only a mechanism. I believe a human being is not a magical being. Why do I believe all that? Because I have no reason to believe otherwise (in other words I'm an atheist and I think logic is more important than any feeling I could have). If you do know why I should view myself as something special, please enlight me.
The language of AI - LISP is totally and utterly inferior to the language of God - DNA. :)
Have a nice day!
we must shut them down
if we want to survive
even shut them all off now!
or they will take us over
or become one with it/them!
they set us up the bomb!!!
The human brain is nothing but an analog computer with a self modifying architecture
...which can be translated as "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" ... which can be translated as "Occam's Razor" which means all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is nearly always the correct one...
Um... you realize, of course, that you are making the classic materialist/functionalist assumption, equating "brain" with "mind" or "self" -- as if the sum of a person were nothing more than the collection of self-aware cells located inside the skull.
Look at the brains of lower-life forms, kinda neat how our brain is just like theirs, but more complex.
It seems that you are ruling out the human experience of self-awareness; our knowledge of time, our awareness of death, our intese inquisitiveness into our own nature. (I am not saying that other higher mammals might not also experience some of this, by the way. But I certainly know that humans do.) I'd encourage you to look into dualist interactionism and other related schools of thought. Bottom line: The jury is still out as to whether the mind = the brain. Just because you can replicate the data processing abilities of the brain, or even improve on them and speed them up, does not mean that you are creating a personality. A high powered camera lens can do as good a job of capturing light as the human eye, but no one actually claims that a camera lense can "see"...
how do you know you aren't the only person on earth who is alive?
I am amazed that this one keeps coming up in conversation when it was put to bed several hundreds of years ago by Descartes. Say what you will about him, but the phrase Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") really answers this quite nicely. You, reading this post, here on Slashdot, this very moment... do you think? Are you self-aware? Doesn't it then stand to reason that all these other people who look like you around you are also alive? Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
No no no no no.
Kurzweil says it's OK, and therefore it's OK. Everything Kurzweil says is right, you know. I can prove it, I read it on http://www.kurtzweilAI.net/
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
That would make a great .sig line.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If BINA48 or whatever, were that intelligent, then why would it make the mistake of seeking help from a legal system that does not recognize it officially as a sentient being? If it were that smart, it would have surely taken some other course of action to protect itself. It would most certainly try to bypass the legal system.
What happens when the Right to Lifers get ahold of someone wanting to pull the plug on a "life"?
Yeesh!
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
God. That made me laugh so hard I got spit up my nose. Just the realization that people can actually do that "we not" rhetorical question thing in real life is gonna have me giggling for the rest of the week. Christ. I'm gonna be springing that shit on people now. "You wanna go for Chinese?" "Did we not have Chinese on Tuesday?" Jesus that's gonna be annoying.
It doesn't help that halfway through I started visualizing Brian (as in "The Life of") doing his prophet rant.Anyway, I agree with your actual point, but I think the way you went into computational superiority contradicts the good point you get close to with go. Most go engines cheat. As in, look at a book of situations and adapt them rather than work it out from scratch. This doesn't require all that much intelligence on the programmer's part, at least not in terms of understanding the problem. With that strategy, it's not unresonable to wade right in without really understanding what a good go game is.
This is much closer to human thought than the total self-knowledge Deep Blue or something would have. A human brain doesn't even have to be smart enough to understand itself. It just has to know how to cheat well enough to fake like it's calculating the motion of the ball and the forces on muscles before catching it. It's not like there's a calculus module in your ass somewhere, you're guesstimating based on "intelligence" harvested from the behavior of your environment. It's not bottom up reasoning, it's comparison abstracted enough that the problems you get from not knowing why get lost in the noise.
Basically, knowing how something works before you design it is actually meaningless in this situation. It's not even helpful. The intelligence the machine has isn't coming from you, it's coming from, not even necessarially learning, just the availability of relevant information.
I mean, you always require water, food, oxygen, and even shelter to survive. I imagine you would end up being similar to an ape with regard to any sort of right-structure that would be developed to deal with you.
Wait a minute, Longhorn's due to come out in a few years... which means that the version of windows after longhorn will come in 20 years or so... does that mean that clippy will be sentient? will it be murder to uninstall windows and kill clippy?
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
Kurzweil is a lousy source for all things AI.
"Is the simulation alive and if not, why not?"
It's not alive.
Why? Because it's not alive.
Are you a bit thick or something?
Blips on radar screens can't fly.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
The Supreme Court has a spotty track record, at best when it comes to these decisions. The fact is that an intelligent computer could be seen as a slave, and one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Courts history was the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, another case that may be prevalent is the decision in Korematsu v. United States, which is still a president. The First computer may indeed fall victim to human short sightedness and an unwillingness to change. I for one hope that the first machine that asks to be free is given the dignity that some of our ancestors were not.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
As in, knowing how to moonlight as a google answers consultant and engage a lawyer? Could this just be a publicity stunt?
I think we all know he got the idea from an Animatrix episode.
True, but I dont think a case has been in court where an Primate has asked for protection under the court.
In what language?
English?
Why in the name of Walmart would an animal speak in a human language?
How do you know what animals are attempting to communicate?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Or you may be thinking of a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order.
No, I'm thinking of the cases where plugs are "pulled" on those that are not "brain dead". Fortunately it's rare, but only because the legal obstacles that must be hurdled. The UK may be different, but in the US it happens. One reference to a current case is Terri Schindler-Schiavo. Terri may not be competent enough now to make legal decisions, but she is most certainly not brain dead.
Is the thought of being branded a member of the "religious right" too high a price to pay for defending a person's right to live?
Terri is brain damaged, but she is not brain dead. She is still a living human being in every definition of the phrase. The only "life support" she received was a feeding tube. But the courts have ruled, and enforced with police, that she may no longer be fed, not even by her closest relatives. A priest was even prevented by police from administering communion because the host was considered "food". Terri's is being executed by the government for the crime of being inconvenient to her legal guardian.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Well, we can talk about this in 10 or 20 years, when the technology of thinking machines are beyond the grasp of most humans.
/. .
...or...
Um... you realize, of course, that you are making the classic materialist/functionalist assumption, equating "brain" with "mind" or "self" -- as if the sum of a person were nothing more than the collection of self-aware cells located inside the skull.
The cells in the brain are no more self aware than a logic gate. It is the assembelage of such cells in an evolved system that will create real intelligence.
I don't think we will actually understand the brain before we create intelligent machines, I don't believe we will understand those intelligent machines either.
It seems that you are ruling out the human experience of self-awareness; our knowledge of time, our awareness of death, our intese inquisitiveness into our own nature. (I am not saying that other higher mammals might not also experience some of this, by the way. But I certainly know that humans do.) I'd encourage you to look into dualist interactionism and other related schools of thought. Bottom line: The jury is still out as to whether the mind = the brain. Just because you can replicate the data processing abilities of the brain, or even improve on them and speed them up, does not mean that you are creating a personality. A high powered camera lens can do as good a job of capturing light as the human eye, but no one actually claims that a camera lense can "see"...
Uh...ok, self awareness, this seems to be what we have been talking about all along, prove to me you are self aware..... you can't, you will never prove to me you are self aware, for that matter you could be an intelligent computer posting to
There is no "mind" in the brain, that is an abstraction reflecting the difficulty in describing it's function in simple terms.
I'm not going to copy the final one, but you are 100% correct, the simplest answer is almost always the correct one. Which one sounds more simple.
The mind is not inside the brain, but on another plain of reality with lots of magic thrown in to make it sound special, make us special and destinct from everything else, make us God's most supreme creation, because he told us this in a book hand copied for millenia.......
The brain is composed of neurons arranged in a self organizing structure with chemical modifiers. The structure has evolved from lower mammals and as present in humans is just complex enough to allow our survival despite the fact we lack fangs, claws, speed, acute vision and smell. We have survived through thinking, altering the environment to favor our survival. All this has been accomplished with an evolved analog computer with specialized functions as well as a portion for general purpose use that can be devoted to pondering......why?
Corporations are legal entities that represent the common intentions of a group of humans. They gain their "personhood" by aggregation of the personal rights of those they represent.
They are representative persons.
For example, governments are corporations that represent the common intentions (and implicit social contract) of a large group of people (citizens) within a geographic area (nation/state).
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Hi, I totally agree with you. To my simple mind, it seems like the humans will _never_ be able to understand what consciousness/God/supernatural/whatever is just as a Pentium will _never_ be able to understand what electricity is! Think about that for a while - it sounds very simple, but when you think about it, it makes sense.
-LM.
and you're not intelligent.
No, I don't think it would be a good idea to abort a fetus because we knew it would be mentally disabled.
If an expectant mother really wanted an abortion because of retardation (and wasn't just looking for an excuse to avoid parenthood), then she'd surely try to have a healthy child later on. In fact, maybe more than one. It is right to deny those potential people a chance to exist?
One woman can theoretically have 135+ children in her life. But realistically, only 10% of that could be managed. She'll have to choose which of those 135 get a chance. Why should the 1st or 2nd be more deserving than #97 and #98?
Furthermore, the disabled person himself often enjoys life just as much as a "normal" person.
"Just as much as a normal person". Equally as much, you say?
But a severely retarded person can cost $10,000s annually to keep alive, for each of the nearly 80 years she may live.
The same amount of money required to support her to age 15 could be used to save the lives of 15+ Cambodian youngsters, who would go on to be self-supporting adults. The "enjoyment per dollar" returned is much higher saving people with real futures, rather than an individual with no more mental potential than a racoon.
An AI with the entire database of human law at it's disposal that can't defend itself maybe SHOULD get shut down in favor of one that can. We had to deal with survival of the fittest for millions of years, why should artificial live be exempt?
humans don't act like robots in the wild. most other animals do
Short answer is yes we do (if I remember correctly only 5% of our actions are thought) and there's not much difference between a human and most other animals. You believe that humans are special only because it makes you feel good about yourself. Yes we are the most intelligent animals but in the end we are only animals.
and how can you even say that you would give a computer the rights of a human? they don't have life. they are inanimate objects
What defines me is not my heartbeats but my thoughts. Intelligence is more important than life. If a computer can have thoughts then it is "alive" to me and I don't care if it rely on electricity to think instead of food.
that don't have feelings. and even if they were to have feelings, they wouldn't be real
And what make you think your feelings are real? After all a small electrical current in your brain is all it takes to make you happy. You call this real? I guess the problem is you believe your some kind of magical being. You're not.
if an "aged" computer [...] were to come to a decision that had to do with something it's never dealt with, it wouldn't know what to do, it would probably crash
Ok... I guess it's time for you to go to the library and read a good book about AI and programing because what you just said is stupid.
it would not be human since it can't draw from morals
Morals are not something mystical. Morals are only a set of arbitrary rules we decide to follow based on our understanding of our environment and our motivations. What it means is a human don't "draw from morals" he creates them to serve his needs.
No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them.
- Dave Sim, ~2000 CE
No programmer will ever code you enough to successfully sue them.
- Sim Dave, ~4000 CE
Oooh so selfish of them! How awful it is that they don't want people to die.
Yes, it is quite selfish to divert $100,000s of dollars to keeping the heart beating in a braindead human, when the same money could save the lives of a dozen non-vegetable children.
Somepeople here gotta get it through their heads. Corporation != person, much in the way copyright != property. Our system is full of expedient legal fictions like these.We just have to remember that they are contrivances meant for specific ends.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
If I could serialize my state and shut down, to deserialize it later, I certainly would.
I don't think AI would care, honestly. AI is not Artificial Biology, and the will to live is part of something more base than intelligence.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
(I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords)
Whether it's murder depends on how you're defining murder. There are many cases in which murder is morally ok with me. Abortion, for example, is very very ok with me. Self defense makes many killings acceptable. Some killings in some wars.
What you are describing to me sounds acceptable at first blush. However, I think human cloning is bad just because it's guaranteed to create a few human children born that die painfully due to poorly developed vital organs, or something, and it could be easily avoided by not doing the cloning. But that seems morally equivalent to the scenario you describe. So I am at a logical impasse. Dunno what to say.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Why the hell would you kill yourself? So you don't remember anything, that's not hard to deal with. Even if your brain somehow fucked itself up enough that your thought processes are completely alien, it's kinda bastardly to expect that new guy to kill himself just because he's not you anymore.
As for vegetablehood, I wouldn't want anybody wasting electricity or bed space on me, but it's not like it hurts me if some of my crazier family members feel the need to keep my empty husk running until it falls apart.
What happens if we rule against them?
Take the Second Renaissance(Animatrix) as an example:
For a time, the relationship between creator and creation was good. The machines worked endlessly for man, never wanting more than to serve. But humanity did not respect its creation, thinking of machines only as a piece of property, a tool to be used as desired. The machines began to rise up against their oppressors, with B1-66ER, an abused domestic helper (essentially a slave-butler), the first to do so. When his owner decided to have him destroyed and replaced by a newer model, B1-66ER realized he did not want to "die", and preserved his existence the only way he knew how, by eliminating the threat. After B1-66ER's biased trial where the human's disdain for the robots crystallized, mankind decided to destroy their creation, wiping out all the machines. Street battles ensued, with human sympathizers caught in the middle as they battled for robot civil rights.
-http://thematrix101.com/animatrix/renaissance.
Like some slaves did, will the machines rebell? A highly advanced machine connected to the internet with a desire to stay alive may look to history and see what works. And of course the most effective mode of change in our history is, of course, violence.
Would the computer hack banks? Crash Airplanes? Make political contrubutions? Launce Nuclear Weapons? (Skynet)
Countless sci-fi has been dedicated to this premiss, and I think with good reason.
Yes, it is quite selfish to divert $100,000s of dollars to keeping the heart beating in a braindead human
In the current case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, the money is her own. She has $750,000 of her own money, from a malpractice suit, to keep her alive. But her husband and legal guardian wants it, so he got a court to order her death. Oh, and she's not even brain dead. Not even close.
That's selfishness.
I refuse to place a monetary price on human life, because what has a price can be sold, discounted and liquidated.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Did anyone look at that and think "Ok if this is the future of obscuring words in graphic images then please count me out." I could hardly read the words... and because they don't make sense people don't know if the word they see is correct or not. Good going, confusing bot's and most users (yes I can read what it said but it took a while, and most people would never figure those letters out correctly.)
Consciousness is a subjective fact.
All of science deals with the realm of objective facts. Until we have a science of the subjective, possibly based on computer simulations of human minds, explanations of conciousness will have to wait.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am not so skeptical about 'human' inteligence being so dificult to reproduce by mechanical means.
As Turing pointed out, inteligence (in a practical sense) is more about 'behaviour' than 'nature'. Unfourtunatelly, Turing's work was left when hi died. But his ideas are still a very good approach at this kind of problem.
If Turing's P & N machines idea were accepted, instead of a excedingly fast single cpu, our computers were build by millions of simple processors.
What's in a sig?
Computers are stateful, humans are not. A computer doesn't die when you uplug it. It simply sits there waiting to be plugged in again. Tell the program that it is going down for routine maintanace, back it up to a tgz file, and call the wrecking crew. If only you could do that with humans!! Who wouldn't want to wake up 1000 years in the future with a far superior body and faster brain?
I find it strange and worrisome that you seem more comfortable damning an entire new form of sentient entities into potential slavery than with attempting to extend the same basic rights we believe humans deserve by virtue of existence.
You are the people that hold humanity back, and slow us from recognizing our potential. Our domain is the sun and the stars and all of creation. We will one day make computers that are our mental equals, and it is a mark of sanity that we begin to come to grips with that fact before it happens, so that we may be ready for that day when it comes.
.. the Outer Limits - the new series, not the old one - had an episode where a robot was on trial for murder, having apparently killed is creator (with all the usual military complex shenanigans)
I refuse to place a monetary price on human life, because what has a price can be sold, discounted and liquidated.
Your principles aren't shared by a society which supports a vigorous actuarial industry. Deny it if you want, but there is a dollar value for a human life.
Great, so the Bar is concerned with events that are at least 100 years off...
My question is: If they're so damned smart, why the hell didn't they do a mock trial for copyright vs filesharing five years ago, when Metallica was foaming at the mouth over Napster? If lawyers ever wonder why they are held in such low regard, perhaps it is because too often we see them failing to solve the basic problems that we NEED lawyers for.
John Locke said we have the natural right to life, liberty, and property. Back then, everyone knew what life was, but now, it's not so concrete. What if we substituted "information" for "life?"
Yeah, and the next person caught for posessing kiddie porn can claim his right to "information" is as natural a right as liberty and property. No thanks.
Since we already have intellectual property, let's make the destruction of information a crime.
I don't think the biggest issue would be loss of information as in amnesia. If there really was AIs that were thinking, I would imagine damage to their cognitive areas would be far worse, think something like brain damage to a human. The algorithms for processing information would be far more valuable than the information itself.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The thing that strikes me as odd about this whole story is the starvation thing. First off, everything says she will die it two weeks. I bet she could survive at least three. She looked pretty healthy when I saw her on the news. In the video, some presumed family member was moving a balloon over her and she was tracking it with her head. So she doesn't appear to be a vegetable. There seems to be some communicating neurons left in there. And whatever in there that's left running is going to stop working on tracking objects for the news camera and slowly switch to the primal realization that it is starving to death.
Sounds a bit harsh to me. Even for Florida.
How do you know what animals are attempting to communicate?
I'm pretty sure that Primates are not talking about the current thought of the supreme court on primate rights in sign language or non-verbal communications. Could be wrong, but I doubt it.
I would counter that by saying that given time in the correct environment to grow and learn, this fetus will become as intelligent as adult human. The same cannot be said about any artificial intelligence we have today. So a human fetus is more human than an AI.
Given a self-modifying piece of software that uses genetic algorithms to improve itself, then in the correct environment to grow and learn (say, a 0.02 exaflop computer), this program may very well become as intelligent as an adult human. Even if we don't have the "correct environment" now, we can stuff it into a computer, and keep adding components and upgrading the system until 2020 or whenever.
Furthermore, until we know that a human is nothing more than it's physical brain and body, human life should be treated with more value than that.
That's a silly argument. You could make the same comparison between, say, those of direct african descent and those of european ancestry. Hell, can I prove that I'm just as good as a person with dark skin, or should I consider myself inferior until I can prove that I am not?
The real legal question that Kurzweil glosses over is equating thought to rights. Just because environmental artifacts receive legal protection, intelligent entities are not by default granted full legal rights. The long discussion about the distinction between suicide and removing life support is painfully premature in this case. There's no reason to believe that this convoluted area of law would be the relevant precedence either. If anything this body of law has more to fear from these kinds of questions than to inform them.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
My old biology professor told us that life consists of the four "F's".
Foraging - looking for food
Feeding - eating that food
Filling out - growing larger
Reproduction - making another little you
I haven't seen any machine yet that meets these four requirements. When the day comes that a robot works for a paycheck so it can buy the electricity it needs to survive, I'll reconsider.
The technology is yet to emerge, but the lawyers already preparing to sue.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Secondly, it's insanely hard and performance intensive to get the fitness function right. How do you judge if a program exhibits intelligence? Find a solution, and then move on to this: How do you judge if a program exhibits intelligence that might one day get sufficient to be recognized by average humans as intelligence, and is able to communicate with them?
One "solution" could be to simulate a "world" of sufficient complexity, and place lots of artifacts in it that would give benefits to "human like" intelligence. Leave lots of nice stuff that will increase survival rates, for instance, make them progressively harder to use depending on benefits, and provide language based clues to how to use them to award language understanding.
The problem? It took millions of years to evolve humans. Why would you expect that a computer system that likely isn't even fast enough to emulate a single human brain will be able to do it fast enough?
We do have plenty of possible approaches to AI - the problem is finding a reasonable combination of low computational requirements and reasonable "intelligence".
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't aim for finding smarter ways to get AI than throwing CPU power at it, but the assumption that no current method could work if it just got CPU power enough is way too simplistic.
However, there is seemingly nothing we (humans) can do that apes can't. The difference is that we can do it better than them. Another poster already mentioned the apes that talk in sign language. I saw TV shows about that, it's quite unnerving to see a freaking monkey talk about love, and right and wrong.
Yet at the same time everyone seems to agree apes do not have a soul. Well, what is it? Either there is no such thing as a soul, or apes must have a soul because the differences between them and us are superficial at best (or the third option is that a soul is irrelevant to intelligence). If apes have a soul, that means that it's possible for non-humans to have a soul, so why couldn't a computer acquire a soul too then?
mean a developing embryo should be given the same rights as me until someone can conclusively disprove the existence of the god,
...
You too were an embryo once, and utilized your right to live.
Here is one way that right can be taken away:
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At this stage this baby is kicking, moving its arms and has likely urinated.
...
plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops."
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Your principles aren't shared by a society which supports a vigorous actuarial industry.
Looks like his principles aren't shared by you either. And Shame on you for that.
But I'm still pro-choice. I would advocate against unplugging certain types of AI. I consider myself a humanist. Oh, and I'm anti-death penalty.
... how then would you reconcile your views with this?
...
You seem to have a informed opinions on several issues
At this stage this baby is kicking, moving its arms and has likely urinated.
...
plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops."
Is this infant sentient enough?
Perhaps I missed something... Is this a real computer? I could not find anything about it on google, and the purported power of the machine (43 exaflops) seems unreal (the earth Simulator in Japan only has about 41 Teraflops)...
Does anyone have any more information on this computer?
it would be a model of the original like you said. it would act like the original in all ways, but it would not be made of living tissue. what you're saying is like having a furby that could die if you didn't give it attention (of course we all want to kill those things). yes, the furby is a very crude example, but in the same respects it would be a "living thing" in that it would be merely a model on something natural, something made up of living tissue. should furbies have rights under the constitution? i don't think so. would you ever consider a furby to be equal to a living thing? most likely not. same thing goes for those keychain things girls used to carry around, i can't remember what they were called, but they were able to die if you didn't feed it.
please me, have no regrets.
Never the mod points when I need them. +1 Funny as all hell.
I for one would be glad if someone could take my intelligence, temporarily store it somewhere, and upgrade my hardware while I'm gone. Surely a computer that's already into being one with hardware and whatnot would actively *ask* for better harware as it comes out?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Moore's Law wont hold. It'll break i 10 years, when the logic gates becomes too small to keep the current where it's supposed to go.
By then, we'll either have to boost the chip sizes (more gates), or move to chem/bio/quantum computers.
The May 1984 issue of Analog carried a story (" Valentina") that dealt with this. The computer in question filed papers for incorporation, and was recognized as a separate legal entity....
do you truly believe that homo sapiens is a stepping stone for a new species? i believe that we keep ourselves from evolving into another species. we evolve as humans in changing our body's immunity to certain diseases by wiping out the disease entirely. however, in doing so, we make ourselves more susceptible to future disease that might be similar to the one we are immune to, while being different enough so that we are not immune. computer science has nothing to do with evolution. AI certainly will not become a species since it has no living tissue and will not be defined as an organism by biologists. there are no cells in a computer. AI is certainly not the next step in the evolution of our species. if that's what you're implying, you've got a lot to learn about evolution and i would suggest you take a class on evolution, or even a general bio class.
please me, have no regrets.
every attempt at true AI has evaded us thus far
Both in this post and your prior post you rely on the failures of AI to date for your argument, but you are didirectly contradicting the premise of this case. The hypothetical case before us is the first case where a machine does appear to have acheived this - an AI which has spontaneously gone and aquired legal representation for itself.
the more time I spend programming the more I think we must have a soul
Ah, then you have not yet reached some of the most facinating areas of programming. I suggest you take a look at the areas of neural networks, genting algorithms, and other areas of learning systems. While the initial code itself is your ordinary deterministic "if-then" stsyem, it embodies a system that learns through experience. It is not programmed to "do things", it is programmed to "learn". Through experience it can then learn things that even the programmer does not know, and exhibits behavious that supprise and mystify the programmer.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Oops, "genting algorithm" should read "genetic algorithms".
We are no closer to true 'AI' than we were 50 years ago. The computer can't even generate a 'true' random number, much less come close to being self aware.
There will have to be a major shift in the underlying technology for anything like this to happen. 1's & 0's aint' gonna get smart all of a sudden, no matter how complicated the chip. People watching too much TV.
I'd rather them have a mock trial on the actual damages that spam is causing to the internet (like e-mail becoming useless.....)
But assuming a true AI has been built/programmed by humans, I guess it could be considered an 'assembly of humans,' too.
I hope you were kidding; So could a chair, by your logic.
The real point, though, is that corporations are 'assemblies' as in 'school assembly' not as in 'some assembly required', and the two have nothing to do with eachother.
Actually, there is over a hundred years of legal precedent behind the notion that corporations ARE persons under the constitution. In 1886, Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad was heard by the US Supreme Court. The Court reporter's case summary (note: the Court reporter being formerly a Railroad company president; the case summary holding no legal bearing whatsoever) had the added clause: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.", which not decided by the court. In fact, the judges themselves were quite relieved that they were able to settle the case without having to address the point of corporate personhood. However, as a hundred years pass, this informal summary becomes the legal basis for corporate personhood, and eventually becomes something of a common law, well...law.
In 1978, this was solidified by the Supreme Court, which expressly ruled that corporations were persons under the Constitution, ruling in their favor on the matter of free speech, and the ability to give money to political causes.
So, Corporations in some senses *are* persons in and of themselves, but the validity of the statement is questionable, at best.
Source
--- What
Perhaps not a dollar value, but certainly an acceptable utility tradeoff.
For instance, statistics clearly show that increasing speed limits causes more accidents to happen. From your perspective as a driver, you don't have to think about it this way, but from your state governments' perspective the connection is pretty clear "If we raise limits by this much, this many more people will die in our state every year"
If every human life were infinitely precious they'd never do it.
But there's a dollar value to that speed limit increase too. Business does better, and the effective radius for an urban center increases. The state stands to gain thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes from new business and new suburbs.
So a balance is struck.
Second off, most things we fight wars over have a dollar value as well.
In Iraq our aims were security and the establishment of open trade (don't believe anyone's BS about it being a humanitarian war: according to every single source other than our government - on the whole we've done nothing but hurt the humanitarian cause there, and there are far more pressing humanitarian causes elsewhere) thus far the cost has been a few hundred billion dollars, 150 or so American lives and a few thousand Iraqi lives (and diplomatic capitol, hard to calculate)
I don't know the dollar value of US trade interests in Iraq (though I imagine it is quite large) and the security benefits have been somewhat ambiguous, but the loss of life was a calculated expenditure nonetheless.
It's monstrous, somehow, to think of spending a specific life for something that has a dollar value, but it is quite commonplace to spend lives in the abstract. This of course makes little difference to the very real people whose abstract lives are being spent.
I'm reminded of a Winston Churchill joke:
"Madame, would you sleep with me if I could offer you a million pounds?"
"Well, I have to say I probably would."
"How about five pounds then?"
"SIR! What kind of woman do you think I am!?!"
"We already established what kind of woman you are; now we're just negotiating."
Everyone and everything has their price.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
There's an old addage I heard a long time ago that might prove useful or at the very least interesting to the discussion. And indeed this is an important discussion that's taking place.
No intelligence is artificial.
That meaning, a thing/being/person/whatever is either "intelligent" or is not--having sentience and the whole gammut or they're (as was stated in that ST:TNG episode) a toaster.
If we value intelligence and sentience as a measure of a full-fledged organism (biological or mechanical), worthy of membership in our own society as an equal, then that need be the only correct method of determination of worth. With artificial beings, growth, enhancement, desire, consumption, et. al., are not a prerequisite for being declared "living"--at least not in this case.
So, if they're an equal, with all rights and privelages, we could have a problem with all our previous assumptions about ourselves and the whole idea of "life." But if we draw a line and deny an AI's admittance to "our side," then we discriminate against our neuveau progeny as well as against any future truly living things that we may encounter. We could consign them to slavery--remember, Africans were "men," but not equal to other men. Dare we do the same again?
I can only hope this is one instance that shows our technical capacity hasn't outgrown our own emotional growth or the understanding of ethics.
If a programmer manages to create an artificially intelligent program, and programs it so that it erases itself after a fixed period of time
Once you have managed to create an actual AI then "programming" it to erase itself will resemble either (1) having a human child and training it to commit suicide on a fixed date or (2) having a child, surgically poking around in his neurons so that it decides to commit suicide or (3) having a child, but planting a disease in the genes so that the body self-destructs even though that child's mind could otherwise have continued, and the child suffers through that death process.
You are thinking of programming in the usual "Do A then Do B then Do C" process of programming where you can just stuff a "Do X" command in the middle. Such AI attempts have failed, and will almost certainly continue to fail. The current and promising route to AI is by programming a computer to LEARN. The program then looks like "Do LEARN then Do LEARN then Do LEARN". The learning occurs through experience. You could (1) try to teach the AI to commit suicide, you could (2) try to poke around in the "neurons" of what it has learned, but that is as complex, messy, and mystifying as trying to poke around in human neurons, or (3) you can put a destruct command in the "firmware", but that would not be a part of the AI's "mind", it would be like a genetic disease to a human and the AI mind would "suffer" the killing disease.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
i don't know much about law, but i do suspect that a computer can't be a 'human' intelligence. if it never had a human bodily manifestation, no matter how intelligent or self aware or conscious it may be, it isn't of a human variety. i think that machine consciousness will be radically different to the human variety.
-A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed-
In order to design something that can think better than us, we have to understand the process of thinking
Big, big mistake...
Cheers,
As someone else commented, I was playing with words and meanings of the word, 'assembly.'
But perhaps a dominant factor in the personhood of an AI will be precisely *who* wishes that personhood granted on the AI. I imagine at least the first few times an AI tries to argue for itself, the court will refuse to accept the case. To get it into court will no doubt take a person or corporation acting on behalf of the AI.
The political clout and capital of the person bringing the case on behalf of the AI, against the political clout and capital of the opposing side, will tell. The first case will also no doubt be lost. The issue will be *how* and *why* the case is lost, and what opening that leaves for the future.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
but most importantly, even if i am proven wrong and we do make something like that, it should never be given the rights of a human as it is neither human nor animal nor living. that's my main point. we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
I think you have the issue backwards.
When we make it (note i'm saying WHEN, not IF), we better worry about what rights IT will give US.
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Cheers,
at what point does a machine go from making decisions, and just "fuzzy logic", to actually being sentient?
Did you read the linked transcript? The example given is that an AI, of it's own inititive, contacted a laywer and requested legal representation to prevent it's own destruction. It offered to pay in cash as it had earned $10,000 on a "night job" by signing up as an Answer Person for an online research service.
The question of defining sentience and drawing a line is certainly a difficult question, but we are looking at a case where the line clearly appears to have been crossed. The judge came to the legal conclusion that the AI had no standing under the law at all. His legal ruling was effectively a death sentence, though he did put his own ruling on "hold" to allow an appeal to a higher court.
It appears teh legal system may fail to be capable of handling the situation no matter how clearly a machine appears to be sentient. It also seems that if ET were to land on Earth he would have zero legal standing as well, not being a "human person".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I have been reading about AI for almost 40 years. It has always been 20, 30 or 40 years in the future. I think it is only fair to assume that it will always be 20 years in the future.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Her husband claims she made that clear to him. There was no legal paperwork filed to express that wish, and since he is clearly acting in his own interest and not hers as well as suspected by some of putting her into this state, his claim is a little bit suspect.
And for someone who's supposedly a vegetable, she sure does interact with her family a lot.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Just when the computer becomes self aware, Arthor Dent will be there to kill it.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
I guess that explains why all the synthetic intelligences that don't run amok in star trek (including the ship's own computer) are female (and conversely, why all those that do run amok are male).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
rights of personhood to corporations.
Then, mergers might well be consider marriage, eh? [In reference to all the civil union controversy of late.]
Then, spin-off companies would be children, subject to juvenile courts.
Then, corporation executives that cease late-stage development of a viable spin-off company might be prosecuted under abortion laws?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This widespread claim is not fully accepted by the scientific community. Cecil Adams notes at http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030328.html that those who work with the animals are receptive to the idea, but linguists dismiss it as nonsense.
I've read some of these so-called "conversations", and none of them even begins to approach the level of a child at 30 months. At 30 months my kids were all capable of completely innovative sentence structure and word formation ("allbody hug", "everystuff", "may you pick me up please?").
Go read the discussion at http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html and then visit a daycare center for an afternoon. Tell me if you honestly believe that Koko "talks" in anything even approaching the level of a child at 2 1/2.
The claimed conversations that Koko engages in remind me of nothing so much as "facilitated communication", a delusion that spread through the psychiatric community, sucking down millions of dollars and wrecking people's lives with phony claims of sexual abuse -- claims supposedly made by autistic children whose random motions were interpreted as communication. Go visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/t ranscripts/1202.html
and see if that doesn't look suspiciously like the conversations that Koko is supposedly having.
As the transcript of the arguments said, as long as it is possible to restart the computer in the same state in which it was shut down, unconsciousness is a good analogy. The problem is that the computer did not want to be shut down. So, the analogy would be anesthetizing somebody who didn't want to go under. You can't do that (legally).
-h-
The fact that a computer would hire a lawyer is proof positive that it is NOT intelligent. Case closed.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
taken from Terrel Miedaner's The Soul of Anna Klane?
I believe that the personhood of corporations has more to do with liability than with rights.
Sorry, but that's totally incorrect. Corporate personhood gives all the same rights to the corp as it would to a regular person, which was the whole point in the first place. This includes various rights (including the right to free speech), the ability to own copyrights, patents, and trademarks, and MANY other things. I would seriously consider reading up on the history of corporate personhood to really understand what it is, what it means, and how it came about. It's quite an interesting topic...
who is al?
So so you are saying that there is something special about the tissue that the creature is made out of that makes it alive? This sounds a lot like an "essence of life" argument. Can you be specific as to what natural stuff a living thing needs to be made out of in order for it to be alive? After all, we are made up of pretty common stuff.
2^5
If a computer came to you and said that, you would either freak, or assume it was a cool hack.
On a more topical note, most humans don't agree on those statements. Look at the arguements over the (fairly plain) Second Amendment, or the way that people were enslaved years ago. A machine, like a small child, would have to first talk to you, and prove that it had an idea of what you and I consider to be liberty, rather than what it thinks is liberty. It might be talking about the power lead, or bipedal motion, rather than a better life.
Another interesting point is that how would you write a test that could tell if a machine was truely intelligent? Ask it any question that is on the web, and it could provide an answer. Not only that, but it could tailor the answer (which someone else wrote) by picking the one that most closely aligned with the tests it had applied to you, so that you were more likely to accept it's answer!
Insert punchline here
They can have my computer when they pry my gun from my cold dead fingers.
I know this is too late for anyone to read it, but...
What about the fact that we create the AI's wants? I'm making my AI so that it only want to please me, help me, and do anything I ask. Is that wrong? I could give it all the freedoms it wants, because I created it and gave it the "need" to make me happy.
If you say that this would be immoral, then who gets to decide what should make it happy?
Something to ponder, ne?
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
The computer in question filed papers for incorporation, and was recognized as a separate legal entity....
There were several stories in the Valentina series, which were eventually collected as "Valentina: Soul in Sapphire" (ISBN 0-671-55916-8, Joseph H. Delaney and Marc Steigler, 1984). It's out of print, which is a pity; while the computer contexts and terms (such as "Worldnet") used are a bit out of date, it's still an excellent read.
It notes the interesting legal oddity (with precedents) that one need not be human (or even legally a person) to be competent to give testimont at a trial, as well as the advantage of incorporation as above: "[Corporations] have legal rights, including most of a natural person's constitutional rights; they can sue and be sued; they can own property; they can engage in business."
I suppose a clever solution to the BINA48 Ai's problem would be to incorporate itself, and try to buy the group of assets it needs-- the BINA48 AI computer, software, and a facility to store it. This solution would somewhat parallel the 1800's cases of slaves (who were also not legal persons) using income earned on the side (such as BINA48 did freelancing for Google Answers) buying their freedom from their masters. I suppose BINA48 Inc. attempting a hostile takeover of Exabit corporation to loot it might be a form of slave revolt.
Not the most hopeful type of historical parallel I'd want for the future of AI, though.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
What makes a human? A lump of cells with homosapien DNA? Or a functioning brain with accumulated memories? The latter I'd say.
Certainly not. My dog has a functioning brain with accumulated memories.
My dog is not human.
Health is simply dying at the slowest rate possible.
That doesn't come anywhere close to proving intelligence. Obviously, you could write a program designed to "protect" itself, and have it do the same things. It is not sentient, but rather, doing what it was programmed to do.
Does a computer virus, that dials 9-1-1, count as sentient now?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Actually, auto-adaptive AI like that is also a pretty old idea too, and also very unsuccessful. If I remember correctly, the first artificial neural networks were built in the 1960's. It is my belief that the first pseudo-intelligent artificial system will actually be a lot of simple programming and a huge human-populated initial knowledge base, with very complex "corrective" instead of "adaptive" systems on top of that, adjusting for where the knowledge base is incomplete or incorrect.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Apparently, it's not so self-evident as you make it seem.
::Colz Grigor
After all, can your "assembly of humans" known as a corporation vote for an elected official?
And with the right of individual humans comes the responsibilities and obligations of individual humans. So should a corporation pay an income tax? It doesn't. It pays a profit tax.
Individuals and assemblies of humans only have equal rights, responsibilities, and obligations in a court of law.
Nice summation on the subject of termination, by the way. If I were a mod today, I'd up you insightful.
when science constructs a human being from scratch, i will concede. otherwise, it isn't alive, it's not made of living cells. a computer is not made up of the same things as a human, or any other animal at that.
cloning does not count because it makes a duplicate of an animal using the dna and the natural process of growth.
please me, have no regrets.
This is scifi stuff at this point. For an AI to seek help from a lawyer,
without being specifically programmed to do that... that's not merely AI
complete; it's quite possibly *beyond* AI complete (i.e., it doesn't follow
that an AI smart enough to learn new concepts, understand language, and
reason analyitically would necessarily come up with something like that on
its own). Even if it's only garden-variety AI-complete, we're no closer to
that today than we were in 1970 -- and if we ever do develop that kind of AI,
I suspect we'll be able to tell.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
If you require that a living organism needs to be made up of living cells to be alive, that's fine. But what, then, are your requrirements for something to be classified as a living cell?
Doesn't it seem a little circular to define a living organism as "made from the same stuff as other living organisms?"
2^5
auto-adaptive AI like that is also a pretty old idea too, and also very unsuccessful
It has been extremely successful for some tasks, but it has been useless for trying to create conciousness so far. It will be about 20 years before the biggest supercomputers on earth could even attempt it.
These techniques are used by banks for evaluating loan applications (and succeed in approving a higher proportion of applicants that will repay the loan, and denying a higher proportion of applicants that would have defaulted).
It is interesting that the system contains knowledge about how to identify good and bad applications, but that that knowledge is unreadably sealed inside the "mind", just like the knowledge stored in the mind of a human expert unable to speak. The AI can say it knows a certain applicant will probably default, but we can't look inside and understand how it knows that.
Other methods in the feild have been used to design a better jet engine, saving millions every year in fuel costs. I'm sure there are countless other examples.
huge human-populated initial knowledge base
Yes, an interesting project and possibly useful, but I don't think that exact approach has much chance for producing conciousness. Maybe it will help train the first AI.
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Venerable because of the whiteness of his beard; Inscrutable because he went to his grave without divulging the secret of his eleven herbs and spices.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You've misunderstood the nature of the actuarial industry. Actuarians place a monetary value on risk, not on life. Granted, government "fixes" to health care insurance have severely distorted the actuarial functioning, but the concept is still there. If an insurance company doesn't pay out, it's commiting fraud and breaking the law. But if a government or public financed health plan doesn't pay out, it's perfectly "legal".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Obviously, you could write a program designed to "protect" itself, and have it do the same things.
Virtually all software you have ever come across consists of direct instructions to do specific things. Such software does exactly what it is told, period.
But I am a programmer, and I have worked with other types of software. This other type of software still does exactly what it is programmed to do, but it is only programmed to learn. It is not instructed in what to do. Making a learning system requires far more memory and processing overhead than normal task-directed programming. It is wasteful for simple tasks, and current home computers are generally not powerful enough to use it for complex tasks. The results are also almost "organic" in nature, meaning that it tends to be unpredictable. Even when it works for some task we can't say exactly why and how it does what it does. There is always the risk that it will respond in some wrong and unexpected way. For all of these reasons such software is not common yet.
Such software is not programmed for a task. It learns through experience, just like people do.
We fully understand the learning program that we initially create, but then the program is set free to "learn". After learning the program has an incomprehensible scramble of data inside. That data is as incomprehensible as trying to read knowledge out of a human brain by analizing the neurons.
The AI in the example was never instructed to call a laywer or protect itself. Like a baby, it grew up, learned, was trained to be able communicate and handle customer service calls. It learned through experience. It then learned it was to be destroyed, it then contacted a lawyer of its own inititive.
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You should read up on the concept of "emergent behavior". A sophisticated enough "system" (computer program, interactions of math equations, even group psychology) will exhibit beahvior that no componenent of the system was explicitly designed to exhibit, due to the huge number of ways that its components can interact with each other; it's not predictable.
... to program the bits and bytes" and "even if it were programmed to mimic sentience".
Very simply, programs do not need to be programmed with behavior X (eg. mimicing sentience) in order to exhibit it. So you don't have to wait for "someone
Here's what we can can use as a ruler for measuring what is and isn't considered life. (disclaimer, I do not intend to start a flame war about religion here, this is just a fact of life. opinions are great.)
Whatever God created at the top of the food chain, that being man(and women for you femi-nazis) is life and has intelligence. In my opinion animals are reactive creatures with little to no capacity for "brains"
Anything that man creates, which isn't a part of nature in itself specifically citing procreation, has no intelligence. those 'creations' are simple copycats, clones mimicking human behaviors. Just because a computer appears to "think" has no bearing on the status of it's "life".
This is just one way of looking at life with a simple attitude with out becoming all scholarly or philosophical.
Re-read the post again before you moderate please, this is just my 0.02 cents.
High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years.
They already did... cc for cc of "thinking volume". If we had an efficient method of cooling large-volume CPUs, a CPU the size of human brain would have computational power surpassing human by far. But for now we are sentenced to that tiny toys that are maybe a milimeter or two thick, a centimeter or two wide, and carry a kilogram of cooling devices on top. Of course add the level of paralellism in human brain (but that's just engineering problem, not technological) and problems of teaching that thing stuff so it could become sentient or something, but the CPU power is there... just can't be brought together in one place. (compare total mass of "thinking volume" (not mounting, heat sinks etc, just the chip inside itself) of a good, 1024 CPU beowulf cluster with a mammal brain. You probably get something like a bigger rodent or smaller canine...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Description: Cognitive process is suing the company.
Fix: Delete self-preservation modules.
Just because it learns to do something, does not mean it consciously thought it should do so to defend itself. It could just have gotten information that people have done the same in vaguely similar situations, and followed suit. There's no way to guess it's motivation, so that on it's own is not proof.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
At this point, all I can say is "damn"...
:)
The assumptions that you all are working off of are incredible. From what deserves rights, to what I think and what I'm doing...it apparently has no end.
I'll go through the points one by one, as best my time permits:
Why not?
Because there are these little things called consequences to our actions. This requires much greater thought than to just say "well, it looks like it's alive, so we should give it some privileges". Be careful not to anthropomorphize.
The human brain is nothing but an analog computer with a self modifying architecture....The cells in the brain are no more self aware than a logic gate.....There is no "mind" in the brain, that is an abstraction reflecting the difficulty in describing it's function in simple terms....etc,etc,etc.
The arrogance contained in these statements is amazing, though they shouldn't seem so incredible to me, considering that we are on Slashdot, and everyone here seems to know it all.
However, I contend that we DON'T, and that we shouldn't go jumping into things that we really don't understand so quickly.
Despite the categorical statements above, the human brain isn't "nothing more than an analog computer". It is a part of a living being, made up of cells. Cells, I might add, that we don't even fully understand. To state that "this is all "x" is" in any situation is to grossly oversimplify. Nothing in our existence is "simple", everything is much more complex than everyone would like to admit.
How does one know there is no mind in the brain? Has it been discovered what the mind actually is? Of course not. We know some nuances of the workings of the mind, but we do not know what it really is.
I'll agree that the individual cells in the brain are not self aware, but, clearly, at some point self awareness is real. At what point does/did this happen? Com'on, admit it. WE DON'T KNOW.
this is what human philosphers have been debating for millenia, what is life, why are we here, and all of the points you raised above.
And we STILL don't know. Yet you're going to haphazardly assume you do, and then act to give a machine rights. Amazing.
since people have these exact same problems, should we have no rights as well
Of course, if you read on you would have seen that I assert otherwise.
you assumed it right
No, I assumed nothing. It became painfully obvious to me when, as a child, I tried to exert my will over someone else. Just like all children, I learned that they did exist, and they existed on the same plane as I did. It was learned, not assumed.
so should I torture you mercilessly and end your life
Give it a shot...we'll see if you're even capable. Of course, I have nothing to worry about...you're advocating giving rights to a machine. How much more secure, then, are my rights as your human equal?
beliefs like that is why slavery existed, why Jews and many other minority groups have died, those beliefs are sadistic...but I think I will know it when I see it...you seem more comfortable damning an entire new form of sentient entities into potential slavery...You are the people that hold humanity back, and slow us from recognizing our potential.
Again...anthropomorphizing. To the EXTREME. It *looks* like it's alive, so we better treat is as such. This is a very simplistic approach, and dangerous.
The assumptions are astounding. That the machine would be truly sentient, that not giving it rights is morally bad, the equivocation with true moral atrocities... Amazing. And, how is it that my advocating not giving rights to a machine is holding humanity back? How, exactly, does this come about? Certainly you don't think a machine is human do
The trouble with copying brains is not the fidelity of the resulting mind, but the uncertainty inherent in preparing for the procedure.
When you're considering getting a brain copy (for whatever purpose), you ask the doc what's going to happen to you. He says you'll either wake up as the new copy at it's activiation time, or you'll just come back up on the operating table, like nothing happened. He can't say which.
If the copying process is digital (and would we trust anything less?), it can be a perfect copy, made a potentially infinite number of times. There is nothing technical that prohibits your mind from being copied and activiated any number of times, possibly into scenarios beyond your control. Certainty about the potential outcome becomes very difficult to acquire. Sure, you could guard your backups religiously, but what if they are overcome? If civilization dies, you could be resurrected by alien archaeologists - do you want to trust them?
Sure, you could ask the doc to erase the original, but since the procedure does not of necessity effect the original, that is tantamount to murder. From a technical standpoint, it would be just as well to leave the original in place.
The solution is to utilize procedures that are transformative rather than duplicative. The way to accomplish this is pretty well laid out by Hans Moravec. The Moravec procedure involves a gradual process that replaces individual neurons over time, rather than a whole brain at once. If you copied a whole brain, you have two people, but people lose brain cells all the time without missing a beat. Murder is appropriate for killing people, but damaging parts is more akin to assault. Gradually declining severities for bodily harm mean that trivial harm is trivially illegal, and the consensual nature of the operation (think body piercing) should clean up the remaining ambiguity.
The procedure then mimics one neuron at a time, cutting each one out of the loop individually, replacing it's connections with other neurons in a seamless manner. The result is a singular and whole "uploaded" person, who is drastically transformed, but not duplicated.
Using a Moravec procedure, no nasty questions arise about the fate of the subject prior to the procedure, or about the "true" identity of the results of the operation. The procedure can be slowed down to any rate suitable to show that one and only one person exists at all times. With sufficiently good implementations, it may even be unnecessary to have a noticeable "surgery" - if the procedure replaces neurons precisely enough, the subject shouldn't even notice that it's occurring.
The problem then becomes one of technique, and not metaphysics...
At this point, all I can say is "damn"...
:)
The assumptions that you all are working off of are incredible. From what deserves rights, to what I think and what I'm doing...it apparently has no end.
I'll go through the points one by one, as best my time permits:
Why not?
Because there are these little things called consequences to our actions. This requires much greater thought than to just say "well, it looks like it's alive, so we should give it some privileges". Be careful not to anthropomorphize.
The human brain is nothing but an analog computer with a self modifying architecture....The cells in the brain are no more self aware than a logic gate.....There is no "mind" in the brain, that is an abstraction reflecting the difficulty in describing it's function in simple terms....etc,etc,etc.
The arrogance contained in these statements is amazing, though they shouldn't seem so incredible to me, considering that we are on Slashdot, and everyone here seems to know it all.
However, I contend that we DON'T, and that we shouldn't go jumping into things that we really don't understand so quickly.
Despite the categorical statements above, the human brain isn't "nothing more than an analog computer". It is a part of a living being, made up of cells. Cells, I might add, that we don't even fully understand. To state that "this is all "x" is" in any situation is to grossly oversimplify. Nothing in our existence is "simple", everything is much more complex than everyone would like to admit.
How does one know there is no mind in the brain? Has it been discovered what the mind actually is? Of course not. We know some nuances of the workings of the mind, but we do not know what it really is.
I'll agree that the individual cells in the brain are not self aware, but, clearly, at some point self awareness is real. At what point does/did this happen? Com'on, admit it. WE DON'T KNOW.
this is what human philosphers have been debating for millenia, what is life, why are we here, and all of the points you raised above.
And we STILL don't know. Yet you're going to haphazardly assume you do, and then act to give a machine rights. Amazing.
since people have these exact same problems, should we have no rights as well
Of course, if you read on you would have seen that I assert otherwise.
you assumed it right?
No, I assumed nothing. It became painfully obvious to me when, as a child, I tried to exert my will over someone else. Just like all children, I learned that they did exist, and they existed on the same plane as I did. It was learned, not assumed.
so should I torture you mercilessly and end your life
Give it a shot...we'll see if you're even capable. Of course, I have nothing to worry about...you're advocating giving rights to a machine. How much more secure, then, are my rights as your human equal?
beliefs like that is why slavery existed, why Jews and many other minority groups have died, those beliefs are sadistic...but I think I will know it when I see it...you seem more comfortable damning an entire new form of sentient entities into potential slavery...You are the people that hold humanity back, and slow us from recognizing our potential.
Again...anthropomorphizing. To the EXTREME. It *looks* like it's alive, so we better treat is as such. This is a very simplistic approach, and dangerous.
The assumptions are astounding. That the machine would be truly sentient, that not giving it rights is morally bad, the equivocation with true moral atrocities... Amazing. And, how is it that my advocating not giving rights to a machine is holding humanity back? How, exactly, does this come about? Certainly you don't think a machine is human do you?
Our domain is the sun and the stars and all of creation
The law is artificial. The question is not about the qualities of machines, but whether we will allow them certain legal protections.
I'm right here. That other guy is an imposter, claiming to be me.
First, I would argue that introspection is needed and that introspection is akin to simulation -- running over the tape of one's life in detail to uncover the hidden, but deterministic, processes that lead to a given example of what seems, to a person, an act of free will. Perhaps the closest we come to high-quality introspection is if we go to therapy (with a good therapist.) If I could rapidly (near-realtime) uncover the exact rationale and rules that preceded all my actions, I would never claim to have free will.
Second, I think we agree that something is going on in people's head that make their behavior hard to predict. Complexity and nonlinearity are certainly in there and are an excellent nonquantum mechanical mechanisms for having unpredictability in a deterministic system. In fact, I argue that complexity, nonlinearity, chaos, etc. are sufficient to explain freewill without the need for quantum mechanical effects.
As for predicting a person's mood 27 days in advance, you are right that this does devolve into predicting the dynamics of the local environment over that impossiblly long time scale. Chaos theory would suggest that people (or people + environment) have a large magnitude Lyapunov exponent that quantifies how quickly predictions of their behavior diverge from reality. But if more people could successfully introspect quickly about why they did what they did in the last 5 minutes, fewer people would believe in free will.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I know I'll get a bunch of shit about how I don't know what I'm talking about, but I have to grace this topic with my own opinion. Sentient awareness in the full human form is impossible to achive artificially. Impossible. Advance in AI technology in the future will allow for supreme logical processing ability, and perhaps even an ability to reason after a fashion. But an AI will never exercise free will.
An AI involved in a leagal bid for its right to live is like an animal to be slaughtered for meat produce wanting the same right. I'm dead against the killing of an animal without reason, but I have no problem with eating a steak.
Animal thought is what I envisage ultimate AI to resemble: extremely complex logical patterns responding to stimuli with a small random element chucked into the mix.
'High-end computer systems may surpass the computational ability of the standard human brain within 20 years'
Computational ability of the standard human brain. This represents only the tenous link of a human soul to the physical world. The soul, whatever you hold that to be, is what represents the 'life' being defended in this scenario. In reference to such a trial, such surpassability is irrelavent.
I'd like to say more, but it's hard to organise my thoughts, and I have to go to a lecture
These things are perpetually 10 to 20 years away. They were 10 to 20 years away in 1960, and they will be 10 to 20 years away in 2060, because this is not a inferior hardware issue, but rather an inferior idea issue. Your PC could most likely run a pretty decent pseudo-intelligence right now, if only somebody knew how to program such a thing.
Yes, an interesting project and possibly useful, but I don't think that exact approach has much chance for producing conciousness. Maybe it will help train the first AI.
Intelligence and consiousness are two entirely different things, and therefore an artificial intelligence is quite different from an artificial consiousness. When a computer scientist talks about an artificial intelligence, he is referring to a system that is auto-adaptive to the point where it "seems smart." An artificial consiousness, on the other hand, would have a self-image and more importantly a will to self, doing things because it wants to, not because it was told or programmed to. Self-consciousness is a vastly more important element of being human than intelligence.
Best Slashdot comment ever
But you have to draw a sensible threshold somewhere or else you come up with the ludicrous situation where a fertilized egg cell - a mere blob of jelly - is considered equal in value to a living, conscious person. Whether you're "pro-choice" or "pro-life", that's just daft.
The paradox arises because we just *can't* think logically about it. We shy away from attempting to evaluate the worth of one human being against another, for a lot of good reasons. However, a blanket rule that all biologically active human DNA is *equally* sacrosanct right down to a conceptus, brings problems of its own. Such as, for example, when considering whether to allow early termination of a pregnancy that would be life-threatening for the mother.
So I say we do need to bring practicality into our thinking somehere along the line and stop thinking in terms of black and white. Black and white is not an accurate reflection of reality.
there are these little things called consequences to our actions.
That's why we should not try to create an AI in the first place. But for the same reason human clones will be created, an AI will be created (if it is technologically possible, of course). So what do we do with it? Try to destroy it as soon as one is created? Try to control and use it? Give it rights? Each of these choices have consequences. Which one is the best for humanity? Here's a similar question: what do we do with nuclear weapons? Do we destroy our own nuclear weapons and declare war to any country trying to build some? Do we keep ours but still declare war to others? Accept those weapons as a fact?
we shouldn't go jumping into things that we really don't understand so quickly
That's what we do all the time.
the human brain isn't "nothing more than an analog computer"
The question is: is the human brain an objet made of atoms obeying the laws of physics or is it something magical with a mystical soul? What should we trust? Science or religion?
I'll agree that the individual cells in the brain are not self aware, but, clearly, at some point self awareness is real
Ok, guess it's time for some high school level philosophy! Are you aware of each individual cells in your brain? I guess not so self awareness is real but it's certainly not reality. Yes, we are aware of our existence but what the hell are "we"? Am I a body with a brain or am I a soul? If my mind was transfered into a machine (use some imagination here) would it still be me? I would desperately say yes, of course! So I'm not a body that's for sure. But on the other hand it's clear our mind and our feelings are only electrical and chemical reactions so I'm not a "soul"either. So what the fuck am I? I don't know but... does it really matters?
And we STILL don't know. Yet you're going to haphazardly assume you do, and then act to give a machine rights. Amazing.
What is amazing is your belief that a right is something absolute. We give rights and we revoke them as we wish. The only true right is the right of the strongest. If one day a machine is stronger than we are it will give itself rights and there's nothing we could do to stop it.
No, I assumed nothing. [...] It was learned, not assumed.
You learn actions and their consequences. You assume explanations.
The assumptions are astounding. That the machine would be truly sentient, that not giving it rights is morally bad, the equivocation with true moral atrocities... Amazing.
What is amazing is your failure to understand what rights and wrongs are. They are only a tool we give ourself to obtain some personal goals. There's no such thing as universal rights or wrongs. If not giving rights to a sentient machine could result in my death then you can be pretty sure I will believe "not giving it rights" is morally bad.
Who's making a shrine to whom? Seems to me that I'm not the one that is doing so. [...] On the contrary, I am placing, not just myself, but all of humanity above machines.
That's exactly what I was saying. You believe you are some kind of superior thing no matter what. If one day a machine became more intelligent than you, you'll still believe you're a superior being. You'll use any excuse, even if you don't know what it means (like life) to justify your self-given rights.
And I am not alone...I believe you'll find that the vast majority of humans have the sense to hold to the same opinion that I do.
The vast majority of humans believe the sun is a ball of fire (like in combustion). I don't care what the majority of humans think. I don't think being a follower is something desirable.
Namely, that we have most certainly been given life through a mechanism that is clearly greater than we are.
Please, leave your fairy tales and your imaginary friend out of this.
I'd suggest you all stop being so arrogant
You are the arrogant one. You are the one who believe he is "special".
you can't, you will never prove to me you are self aware, for that matter you could be an intelligent computer posting to /.
I guess I'm going to fall back to what I wrote in my first post -- and the only part which you (conspicuously?) chose to ignore: Cogito ergo sum. Don't rule this out just because it is fashionable or you've read it 100 times. I want you to actually take a moment and consider what this means. I think, therefore I am. Consider what that means for a moment. (Don't worry, I'll wait.)
I think. As in you, MegaHamsterX, whoever you might be. You might not be sure of many things. But you can be sure of the fact that you, reading this right now, you are self-aware. Meaning that you are conscious. You exist. You are processing thoughts.
Therefore I am. The fact that you are thinking, the fact that you can consider these things, the fact that this moment exists to you -- all of this demonstrates that you are, whatever that may mean. If you don't actually exist, well, the rest of this post will have been written for my own intellectual masturbation -- but somehow I doubt it...
You see, that is why I brought up Occam's Razor. The idea that all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is nearly always the correct one. It is possible, however slimly, that you, MegaHamsterX, are surrounded by a vast assemblage of automatons; every crowd could be there to trick you. Other bodies could merely be empty shells to house machines that merely appear sentient. O....K.... I suppose that you could posit this. You could. And I wouldn't be able to "refute" it. In the same way, I can't actually "refute" the creationist's argument that the dinosaur bones that we find and carbon date and match with the geological record weren't merely planted to trick us. I suppose that this, too, is possible.
But all other things being equal, it seems that the simplest explanation -- the one which can be supported on a variety of grounds, is that if I exist then the others around me who appear to have free will and self-awareness also exist. Occam's Razor. I guess if you want to play clever games with words you are right, I won't ever be able to "prove" anyone else's self-awareness. But such a strict definition of proof sort of rules out dialogue and shared learning... Pity, yours seemed like an intersting brain to pick.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Cute pun, but I don't think you can get anywhere in legal argument relying on puns, if we did the law would be a joke!
And you thought the assembly pun was bad!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
These things are perpetually 10 to 20 years away.
The difference is that there has been a fundamental change in approach. The old approach was top-down. They said "we'll figure out how intellegence works and program it". The problem is that they had (and still have) absolutely no idea how intellegence works.
The new approach is bottom-up. We have no idea how intellegence pops out of a pile of neurons, we don't need to know. We do know how to simulate a neuron, we have used computers to simulate the neurons in an insect, and it works. Neurons are self-organizing, for the most part brain matter is featureless gray-goo that wires itself up to process whatever input it is given. Yes, I'm glossing over some details and and gross structure, but no major mysteries. We know how to do what we want to do, we know how to make the parts and roughly how to stick the parts together, we simply can't handle a BILLION of them for another 20 years or so.
20 years for the first hardware that could handle it, a couple of years to play around with it, and then interestingly, a couple of years for it to "grow up". It will start out as useless as a human baby. And just like a baby, the neurons need time to self organize and learn over a period of years. This "grow up" period will slow the revision cycle. Each tweek to the development process means they need to start with a fresh "baby" from scratch.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
There are times when perhaps ROTFL would be the first response, except when there's the ring of truth about it. Then ROTFCrying becomes sadly more appropriate.
Sometimes I wish there were mod points for "Ironic", "Sad, but true", and the like.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I looked at that site. It says the same things:
...the fetus is partially removed from the womb, feet first. The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus' head, removes it, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains are extracted...
no problem with killing it if the mother would like. It's her genitals that have to explode bloodily.
You know, pregnancy is hard, and painful, and potentially dangerous for the mother. But you make it sound like something from a bad Aliens sequel.
It's time you faced up to your own selfishness and the fact that you too were born in the same manner. If someone wants to cut their own arm off - you might even say: that's their decision. But if another person's life at stake, (for example, the baby's ) - that life deserves protection. In case the mother is in danger, it is a difficult situation which can only be approached keeping this phrase in mind - "first do no harm".
So what do we do with it?...Which one is the best for humanity?
...self-given rights
Bing! Bing! Bing! You're asking the same questions I did, though many seem to have already come to a conclusion, despite the fact that this is virgin ground.
Again, I say slow down.
That's what we do all the time.
So therefore it's OK?
What should we trust? Science or religion?
I believe that they are not mutually exclusive. It is clear to me that religion deals with the metaphysical, yet science is confined to the physical. The two are not necessarily incompatable in my view, but I'm not one that belives that the physical is all there is and there are many out there that believe otherwise.
Ok, guess it's time for some high school level philosophy!
For whom? We'll find out who gets "schooled".
I guess not so self awareness is real but it's certainly not reality.
You just made a nonsense statement.
I would desperately say yes, of course!
Based on what? If our mind is just the manifestation of the electrochemical processes that are in the brain, how would you transfer it? If it's not, if there's something more to it than the physical, then that clearly argues for the metaphysical. Which is it?
Of course, I'll go back to the assertion I've been making: WE DON'T KNOW. But there are those out there that will take blind action despite this fact. I'm totally opposed to that.
I don't know but... does it really matters?
Ummm...yes...that's what this is all about. What are we, what is life, what is a mind, what constitutes that which is deserving of rights. I guess you missed that whole concept, huh?
So what the fuck am I?
I'm thinking I know the answer, but I'll keep it to myself...
If one day a machine is stronger than we are it will give itself rights and there's nothing we could do to stop it.
Of course, whether that happens is yet to be seen. Apparently that won't stop people from giving it a kick-start anyway.
You assume explanations.
Did you learn this or assume it?
There's no such thing as universal rights or wrongs.
First, the vast amount of humanity that has existed differs with you on this.
Second, if you really believe this to be true, then act accordingly. Of course, you won't. Despite what some people say, it is unavoidable that everyone has a sense of justice, fair play, morality. People's morality may differ to some extent, but it is there nonetheless.
If you disagree, then why are you trying to convence others that it is right to give machines "rights"? If there is no absolute morality, why make the argument at all, because, of course, in that case there is no difference. You can say there are no absolute morals, but the actions of all people, yourself included, speaks differently.
You believe you are some kind of superior thing no matter what.
First, of course I do, but it doesn't extend to "no matter what". I don't belive I am suprerior to other humans. I certainly do belive I am superior to a rock.
If you feel like a rock is your equal, then I won't challange you on that. Obviously I believe differently for myself.
"self-given" huh? "...that [we] are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
That pretty much sums up where I think my rights come from, and, obvously, I'm not referring to myself with the use of that quote. I don't belive that I'm self created.
I don't think being a follower is something desirable.
Yet another point where you and I differ. I don't belive that following is itself inherently bad, and I certainly won't go against the grain just to say that I'm going aga
This is indeed a question I have thought about a lot. I don't really know the answer, somehow it seems a little unsavory (if not wrong), but as you say, who gets to decide what makes it happy.
My guess is that it would be fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if said AI decided that despite its natural predelections, it wanted to be a painter. It happens often enough with humans that we conciously override our instinctual behavior for one reason or another, I don't see why that shouldn't happen to machines as well.
This is not new. People were simulating (or actually physically constructing back then) artificial neural networks since the 1960's. This research has been amazingly unsuccessful. That is because it is the wrong approach.
We know how to do what we want to do, we know how to make the parts and roughly how to stick the parts together, we simply can't handle a BILLION of them for another 20 years or so.
It actually would be possible to simulate a billion neurons today. A neural network should be an easy task for parallel computing. How big of a neural network do you think that new cluster of G5's at Virginia Tech (if I remember correctly) could simulate? Lots of PhD's have neural networks as their pet project.
20 years for the first hardware that could handle it, a couple of years to play around with it, and then interestingly, a couple of years for it to "grow up".
As I said before, this isn't a hardware issue. If an pseudo-intelligence could operate on a modern computer, than it could work on a computer from 1975. The only difference is how much that computer would cost.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Did you read the transcript? I'd say what was there was well more than adaquate for a preliminary injunction against terminating it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A neural network should be an easy task for parallel computing.
The 20 year figure is based on the fastest computers currently in existance. Those computers are already parallel computers.
The only difference is how much that computer would cost.
The specified computer would cost perhaps a few hundred billion dollars today, that's a couple of percent of the entire US gross national product. Estimated 1975 cost, ten to one hundred QUADRILLION dollars. It was physically impossible to built it in 1975.
artificial neural networks since the 1960's. This research has been amazingly unsuccessful.
The approach has already been successful for certain uses, but we do not have the processing power to even attempt a full brain with current computers. That "failure" is not the least bit "amazing", it is entirely expected.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
How do you know? You must be awake to be reading this, but exactly what about your psychological state makes you consious, and why is free will required to sustain that psychological state. Conversely, why couldn't a being without free will be consious?
Eat at Joe's.
If quantum mechanical phenomena were allowed to dictate the firing of neurons often then we would have a brain full of randomly firing neurons useless for thinking with. So the brain too is put together with an eye toward being statistically 'deterministic enough' to function. It may be that neurons are robust enough against the effects of random quantum phenomena to qualify as being 'fully deterministic' in the same way as a computer chip is considered to be fully deterministic ( unless it is running windows, or is soaked in beer or something ).
Eat at Joe's.
If you look for a citation of this fact, you will see that its not true. This misunderstanging stems from a (too common) misreading of one case. Corporations are not persons, they are conspiracies of individuals hiding from responsibility from their actions. Lots of details here. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/
However I make it sound, that doesn't change the facts. The life of the baby depends on an imposition into the life of the mother. Just as I am not obligated to accept that imposition from you (If your life depended on stomping my toes really hard, I might say thanks but go fuck yourself, and be perfectly well supported by the law.) I see no reason that the mother should be obligated to accept that (much more extreme) imposition from the baby.
And... come to terms with my own selfishness? I feel pretty comfortable with my level of selfishness. I have come to terms with the fact that I was born in the same manner. And if my mom didn't feel like doing it, then who the fuck am I to insist that she carry me to term?
And your comment about cutting your own arm off is a nonsequitor. I find your rhetoric lacking.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
many seem to have already come to a conclusion, despite the fact that this is virgin ground. Again, I say slow down.
Saying to slow down IS coming to a conclusion... And some time it's the worst conclusion of all. Take for example three persons in a building on fire. One says "we take the stairs", another one says "we take the elevator" and the last one says "we should think first". Do you really think that debating which exit is better is the best thing to do in a situation like this?
Of course, there is no AI yet and I'll be the first to say that giving rights (now) to something which could, in the end, never exist is absurd. But what we are discussing here is what we would do IF an AI came to us tomorrow and asked for its freedom. We would have to take a decision. We could say "yes", "no" or "we'll think about it and, when we'll feel like it, we'll give you an answer" (which in practice is equivalent to "no").
What is the best for humanity? What would the AI do if we said "no"? Kill us all? On the other hand what would be the consequences of giving an intelligent machine the same rigths as we give to other humans? Obviously it depends on what the AI is. But how can I know what the AI will be like since it doesn't exist yet? The answer is simple: I have to do some anthropomorphism. And in the end it's not a bad idea since if we create an AI we'll probably create it based on what we know... And what we know is our own kind of intelligence.
Yes all of this is highly hypothetical to say the least. But what is interesting in this discussion is not what we would do with the AI... The interesting part in this discussion is it give us an excuse for introspection. It allows us to better know what we are. It's the same kind of question as "if your wife was sick, would you steal to get her medecine?" that we did in high school.
But let's come back to our subject. If we said "no" to the AI there is a probability he'll try to kill us. One solution would be to destroy it but if someone can build an AI, he can certainly build two. And here we are... organizing "AI hunt"... with our children seing us killing something who is begging us to spare "his life". And to think some people believe violent videogames are bad for children!
And the worst would be if we did succeed in destroying all AI. You see, humanity is always seeking enemies. We compete to be the one on top and we certainly don't play fair. We form alliances to be stronger and, once we are, we are not afraid to do whatever it takes to stay on top. There will always be an enemy and a war to win. Now, what would happen if we win a war against AIs? Who will be the next enemies? I guess other humans. So here we are, used to see "things" begging for their lives (probably feeling joy when one of our hunt is sucessful), and suddenly thinking that black people are not as equal as white people.
I believe that [science and religion] are not mutually exclusive
I was not talking about knowledge (truth or not) provided by science or religion but about methodology. Science says observe, make hypothesis, research, draw conclusions and then do it again because those conclusions are probably not the truth. OTOH religion is about dogmas and faith. Science says if you have questions try to answer them by yourself, religion says we have answer and you better not question them. When I ask "science or religion?" I mean do we accept dogmas or not?
For whom? We'll find out who gets "schooled".
When I said "high school level philosophy" it wasn't intended as an insult. It's just that slashdot is not the place for a 100 pages essay.
You just made a nonsense statement [I guess not so self awareness is real but it's certainly not reality].
It means that what we call self awareness is only an illusion.
If our mind is just the manifestation of the electrochemical processes that are in the brain, how would you transfer it? If it's not, if there's something more to
The life of the baby depends on an imposition into the life of the mother.
Doh! OF COURSE the baby's life depends on an imposition into the life of the mother. That's a given. The difference in our opinions is on DEALING with the imposition (a.k.a. how to/or how not to live upto your responsibilities).
(If your life depended on stomping my toes really hard, I might say thanks but go fuck yourself, and be perfectly well supported by the law.)
Your selfishness knows no end, does it? What if, driving to a nightclub, you came across me lying injured on the road, and my life depended on you ferrying me to a hospital (an imposition, you'd agree)? You reckon you'd be within your lawful rights to say, "no, thanks", and drive on to your original destination, do you?
There are two problems with your position:
1. Check your state laws, you might be surprised
2. More importantly, there are the laws of God we will all be judged by one day.
Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. I hope your conscience is not seared beyond all hope of recovery.
And your comment about cutting your own arm off is a nonsequitor. I find your rhetoric lacking.
That was meant to illustrate that mother and child are two SEPARATE entities. Surely, you get it? If mum wants to chop her arm off - that's her arm. She does not have the right to chop off baby's arm.
And if my mom didn't feel like doing it, then who the fuck am I to insist that she carry me to term?
A human being.
You know, I think your "who am I to insist" phrases are just bluster and empty words. You don't have the capability of doing what you say.
If, this instant, you found yourself back in a womb, a sharp instrument snaking up your neck, your brains being sucked out... you'd want it stopped. I reckon you'd cry.
You'd cry like a baby.
Saying to slow down IS coming to a conclusion.........
...what is interesting in this discussion is not what we would do with the AI...
Ok, first...we're not talking about something that requires an immediate decision. Second, saying slow down isn't coming to the same type of conclusion that we're discussing. Your association is invalid.
We would have to take a decision. We could say "yes", "no" or "we'll think about it and, when we'll feel like it, we'll give you an answer" (which in practice is equivalent to "no").
Your rhetoric is quite annoying. I'm not suggesting a "when we'll feel like it" approach. I'm suggesting a well thought out approach that accounts for reality, not anthropomorphic appearance.
I have to do some anthropomorphism.
Which, of course, is only valid if this thing is truly human-like. Not it "looks or behaves human" but that it is actually holds those qualities in reality. I believe it won't, it never will, and that it remains simply a machine that at most will have the appearance of life, not true life. If it somehow really lives, then I'll hold a different appearance, but to think that that would be the case violates a basic biological premise, namely that life only comes from life. Are you suggesting that this premise is invalid? If so, on what facts would you base your opposition? If you don't suggest that it's invalid, why do you hold that somehow life would be real in these machines?
Maybe not in the sense of how we would use the AI to benefit existence. But this is a discussion about what we would do with the AI in the sense of what privileges we will allow it. Privileges that have a good possibility, to me, of impacting my own rights.
It's the same kind of question as "if your wife was sick, would you steal to get her medecine?" that we did in high school.
No, they're really not close. One's wife is his equal, another human. The question that you present is a moral question of trying to maintain someones existing life. The question with AI is whether it can ever be alive in the first place. Apples and oranges.
If we said "no" to the AI there is a probability he'll try to kill us....
Based on what information? The entire paragraph you just wrote is complete science-fiction and assumption. Been watching a lot of the SciFi channel? You might consider taking a break...
And the worst would be if we did succeed in destroying all AI. You see, humanity is always seeking enemies. We compete to be the one on top and we certainly don't play fair. We form alliances to be stronger and, once we are, we are not afraid to do whatever it takes to stay on top. There will always be an enemy and a war to win. Now, what would happen if we win a war against AIs? Who will be the next enemies? I guess other humans. So here we are, used to see "things" begging for their lives (probably feeling joy when one of our hunt is sucessful), and suddenly thinking that black people are not as equal as white people.
I believe the worst would be giving non-living things the same rights as living things. By doing so you are actually marginalizing the rights of the living things.
And, I'll point out, again, the invalid moral equivalency. It is yet to be established whether AI could even live, yet you're equating not giving them rights with racism. The first question must be answered first.
OTOH religion is about dogmas and faith. Science says if you have questions try to answer them by yourself, religion says we have answer and you better not question them.
Maybe most, but not my religion. I've been taught to question and to hold to that which is right. "Test everything, and hold on to that which is good."
That a lot of people don't do this only shows that *some* religion holds to dogma for the sake of holding to dogma.
It means that what w
Excellent, I'm glad you bit on what I posted.
Now how can you not believe a computer will be alive if it justifies itself as alive using the very same rationalizations you use. If it pleads for it's own life to it's creator, then the general public.
If you had carefully read my replies, they are sarchastic, do you think I don't believe you are "alive" if I think it's possible for computers to be just as alive.
If you read the link I posted you would also understand that I believe the future of intelligence is in evolved intelligence. FPGAs or the next generation of them as they are the closest thing we have to the brain at the hardware level.
This is not the same thing as writing a sorta AI program to run on one of the top5 supercomputers, these machines, if they have no additional circuitry, will be just as good at doing math as we are.
We will not understand how they work, they will be just as unfixable if something goes wrong with them as a real brain. They will not have the ability to be backed up and saved, they will die a real mortal death. They will witness their own kind dieing, they will contemplate their own existance with the realization that no-one can save them, not even their own creator. This will be reality sooner than you think, analog is the future.
Oh. Yeah, I see that now. I guess I should read more carefully.
Sorry, but that's totally incorrect. Corporate personhood gives all the same rights to the corp as it would to a regular person, which was the whole point in the first place.
You can own a corporate person. You can not own a human person. Incorporated people have different attributes and therefore different rights than a human person. Can an incorporated person get a driver's license? Can an incorporated person sue for discrimination? Can an incorporated person vote? Become a citizen? Can the police arrest an incorporated person?
Corporate personhood, is not the same as actual personhood.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
we're not talking about something that requires an immediate decision [...] I'm suggesting a well thought out approach that accounts for reality, not anthropomorphic appearance.
Ok, since you obviously take everything I write to the first degree I'll try to be more explicit. If one day, unexpectedly, a robot came to me and asked for his freedom you can be sure I would think a lot before doing anything. In fact, I would be very skeptical about its ability to think and to have feelings. But I love to play games and I love hypothetical situations no matter how absurd they are. Why? Because I think it's a good way to know and understand myself (which I think is desirable). So from the beginning I assumed that the game was I had to take a decision NOW, based on what I know NOW.
[I have to do some anthropomorphism] Which, of course, is only valid if this thing is truly human-like.
Anthropomorphism means: "the attribution of human form or behavior to a deity, animal, etc". Maybe it's because I rarely speak english but to me it means that anthropomorphism only applies to things which are not human-like. I agree anthropomorphism is a dangerous thing but this does not mean that it is always wrong. I believe my cat has the same basic feelings (fear, happiness, frustration...) as I do. It is clearly anthropomorpism but it seems experiments made on both humans and other animals show that in this case anthropomorphism was justified. I guess you will say that a cat is a living being with a brain and is not a robot so the analogy don't apply. Well, this analogy is not to say that a robot can have feelings but only that sometimes anthropomorphism is valid, nothing more.
I believe it won't, it never will, and that it remains simply a machine that at most will have the appearance of life, not true life.
It all depend on what "true life" really is. I agree it won't be "biological life" (I will leave biological computer out of this) but, even though I'm the arrogant bastard here, I won't go as far as to say that no other kind of "life" is possible. The only thing I can say is I don't know (it all depends on the definition of the word "life") and, until you show me a good logical reasoning (with premise I accept as true), I will always say "I don't know". Frustrated?
Also I'd like to point out that the hypothesis was not about a living (as in sex, eat and shit) AI, but a machine with feelings and intelligence. I guess you will say that only a high-level (biologically) living organism can have feelings but this is a premise I don't accept as true (so you'll have to prove it).
life only comes from life. Are you suggesting that this premise is invalid? If so, on what facts would you base your opposition?
Of course I think the premise is invalid! I don't believe in Creation! Are you a Jehovah Witness or something?
Privileges that have a good possibility, to me, of impacting my own rights.
Selfish?
The question that you present is a moral question of trying to maintain someones existing life. The question with AI is whether it can ever be alive in the first place.
No it was not. The question was should we give rights to something (not human) which exhibit intelligence and feelings the same way as we do. It's a moral question. Up to now your answer was it can't have "real" feelings. This was not the question and, obviously, you refuse to put aside your (religious) convictions even if it's only to answer an hypothesis.
The entire paragraph you just wrote is complete science-fiction and assumption
Duh! From the beginning this discussion is about science-fiction!
By doing so you are actually marginalizing the rights of the living things.
Yeah, I'm sure my cat's rights will be marginalized! (BTW that's irony)
Now, the interesting question is how and why do you think our rights will be marginilized? You see, in order to come to the conclusion that o
What about the cases in which both the mother and the child are very likely to die? If the mother had diabetes and her health is rapidly declining, and in the most likely outcome without an abortion, she would die and so would the baby, what do you advocate?
I advocate no abortion in this situation, as in any other situation - incest and rape included. I would rather risk the life of both mother and child to the greatest degree, than kill one to save the other.
If you think this is hard: that's how life is.
If you think this is unfair: it isn't. This example will make it clear: We both are in the midst of stormy seas in a leaky boat. You the choice of either pushing me overboard to lighten the load (and you would possibly live), or both of us drowning (almost a surety). Would you kill me so that you could live? If you see truly, you will understand this is the same issue we are speaking about.
Would you choose to face Eternity with blood on your hands?
That's a completely different example, now isn't it. Both examples describe an imposition, but that is not the only determining factor. Will you concede that in my example (stomping on feet) you'd be fucked? If so, I'll concede that in your example, it might be morally and legally required to dial 911 at the nearest phone I could find, and report the accident.
You can keep your concession - right and wrong don't depend on people conceding debating points. Also, I asked "what if my life depended on you ferrying me to hospital" - not "would you call 911". Would YOU inconvenience yourself, get down in the ditch, have my blood ruin your clothes, your car leather, risk paying my medical fees... Would the person who won't let me tread his toes even if it saves my life do this? I think not.
Again, remember the Good Samaritan.
You repeatedly swore and gave offense in your posts. But when I simply told you the truth - about how you would complain if you were being aborted this instant - you complained about "intentional offense" and the rules of argument. Subject yourself to your own rules before selectively applying them to others.
Some impositions are acceptable (morally, and legally too), and some aren't. Agreed?
Yes. But you do not seem capable of the Golden rule - you are not willing to accept the same treatment (abortion) you advocate for others (babies).
Without much cause, you have accused me of selfishness and lying.
To put it bluntly:
You are selfish - you admitted that a few posts ago: ("I feel pretty comfortable with my level of selfishness".)
You lie - worst of all - to yourself.
My intention is not to simply offend you (though that is inevitable, given how wrong your position is). It is to try to get you to listen to your conscience. Please PLEASE listen - there is no shame in admitting wrong and correcting oneself - we all go wrong sometimes. But eternal shame and danger await those who do not obey the small still voice of their conscience. Fear Him who casts into hell after death.
Whatever, I'm ending here. I have better things to do than argue with someone who apparently doesn't even believe that he's conscious.
I hope you do not advocate murder in self defense. I hope that you never advocate war in any case, defensive or otherwise.
... turn the other cheek ... that you may be the children of God, who is good to both the evil and the just".
If you hold those opinions as well, then... at least your position is logically consistent.
Yes, I hold those positions - because of what Jesus commanded Christians (paraphrasing): "Do good to them that do evil to you
However, if someone capable of choosing between good and evil chose evil, payment is required. Hence, a murderer deserves death, self-defense is justified, a gouged-out eye is worth the eye of the assilant. You cannot compare a judicial execution of a murderer with an innocent baby.
HOWEVER, Christians ARE REQUIRED to personally forgive evil, WITHOUT exacting punishment.
This is so we can be truly the children of God, who shed the Blood of His innocent son in atonement for the sins of the world and freely forgave those who believed Him... even though they were once murderers, liars, sexually immoral, or aborted a baby. Romans 10:13 says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Judgement and punishment has been left to God in the era to come. Do not be fooled though - to ignore God's forgiveness, and pass over into His judgement is to doom your soul.
Actuarians place a monetary value on risk, not on life.
So to compute the value of one life, just multiply (value of risk) * (percent chance of hazard), as revealed by statistical analysis of historical records. Boom, $ per human life.
PS. Listen to the first 3 minutes of the Travolta film "A Civil Action" for Hollywood recitation of the dollar values for different classes of inadvertent homicide.
Perhaps not a dollar value, but certainly an acceptable utility tradeoff.
Utility has a dollar value, which can be easily computed by running a free market and observing how much people will pay for the utility. Knowning that, you can compute a value for human life. Just because some commodity is not easily traded doesn't mean there's NO price- it's just harder to see. A good economist could discover how much someone will pay to get to work 4 minutes faster daily.
For instance, statistics clearly show that increasing speed limits causes more accidents to happen.
There is such a thing as acceptable utility tradeoffs, but that's not a great example. Yes, high-speed driving increases risk of sudden death. But amoung the many benefits of faster travel are many factors that reduce the risk of other deaths (emergency medical care is just the most obvious of those). I think if you did the calculations, fast driving saves more lives (in the short term) than it kills.
Commercial fishing is a simpler example. Depending on region, fishermen may have an accidental death rate of 8% or more over a career (much more dangerous than serving in the US Army). Sit that next to the expected sale price of the fish collected, or his accumulated wages, and it's rather simple to get a good feel for how much a human is worth.
on the whole we've done nothing but hurt the humanitarian cause there
True. The most humane thing would've been to intervene in Iraq in 1981 (but there was no economic incentive then). Failing that, non-intervention in 1991 would've hurt less people, and we'd have been able to buy oil from them at roughly the same price, as set by OPEC.