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."

Comments

Nonsense

[Scarblac]

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.