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Legal Rights for Computers
nicholast writes "There's a really smart story in the current issue of Legal Affairs Magazine about granting legal recognition to computers: when that might happen, why it could happen, and what a discussion about it will teach humans about themselves."
I believe this was already settled in the case of Maddox vs. Data on stardate 42523.7. The case determined that Lt. Commander Data, an artificial lifeform constructed by Dr. Noonian Soong, was not the property of Starfleet, but rather a sentient being with the full legal rights afforded any other.
I demand citizenship for our metallic friend!
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I would post a counter to this article, but my computer might sue me.
I hardly think a computer deserves a say in court. Unless its self-aware, which is a good 100 years off, and even then... oh well. (i realize this story is ficticious)
Yes, but what sort of accent did it have?
When their robot drones start pointing plasma cannons at us?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This is not a "really smart" story, it's a fantasy. It's too many ill-informed people (with too much time on their hands) that have seen "I, Robot". It even reads like some of the 'Susan Calvert' Asimov stories.
There is a world of difference between programming something to *act* as though it has emotions, and something actually having an emotional or original response. The former is no different to calculating a spreadsheet, the latter has to do with independent and original experiences and actions - implying intelligence and self-awareness. No computer today, no matter how well programmed, is as self-aware as a house fly. We don't grant flies legal rights.
The closest we've come to simulating intelligence, or at least produced non-programmed behaviour in computers are the neural networks coded up where the instructions ("program") are held within and are a function of the dataset rather than the construct. Even neural nets are simply matrix equations, albeit non-linear usually, and are thus completely deterministic. The typical neural network has less than 1000 nodes within it, the human brain has 100 billion neurons on average (with 10-50 times that many glial cells). The phrase "does not compare" doesn't even come close.
So, in short, what a load of rubbish.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
How about we just concentrate on holding on to the legal rights we HUMANS have in Bush's America?
the Age of Stupidity.
A computer must have needs before being given rights to do something. How can a computer have conscience of his "legal" rights to do something? It can't of course. Computers are just machines!! When will we stop all this bullshit about machines?
Just look at the history of women rights, black rights, gay rights. Some of those cases are "solved" today, some of them are pending, but one thing is for sure: as soon as another category of sentient beings demands equal treatment, as subject, not as object, it gets nasty and former "master race" rarelly gives up without a fight.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Does this mean computers could get legally married? Will we see adultury among computers ("you've been wirelessly networking with that laptop again!")
More interestingly, will computers be "coming out"? Will we see PCs telling their owners that "actually, I prefer Linux to Windows." ("I'm the only Linux PC in the village?")
This is great for lawyers. Just imagine the possibilities when these clueless people start suing their computers for all the actions the malware on them performs...
$$$$
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Some people (don't know what to call them, except maybe "Turingists" or something like that) view personhood as a behavior. (Which opens it up to more than just AI -- use your imagination.) Religious fundamentalists view personhood as a genotype (i.e. even a single-cell zygote is a person). Most of the population doesn't take a side. Whatever.
It's a shame that it'll probably be decided some day by courts instead of philosophers. Actually, it's a shame it has to be decided at all (but it does) since no matter what happens, there will be losers. And they will be losers in a fundamental way: they're going to live in a society where what they perceive to be murder, is allowed.
I really don't think computers should be consider leOH GOD THE USB CABLE IS ENTERING MY EYESOCKET!
Don't know about you, but I'm already 0wn3d by my computer - every time it crashes or needs a reinstall....
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Our legal system is far behind the times when it comes to technology, 'cyberspace', online privacy, etc. I wish todays legal minds were working on those issues instead of dreaming up these far off futuristic scenarioes.
one spys another fan of Short Circuit 2.... I commend your commitment to being unconventional.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I cant do that
This sig is intentionally blank
Reminds me of the TNG episode The Measure of a Man where Data's legal rights are established.
I think the question of personal responsibility will get very fuzzy in the not-too-distant future...especially once brain/computer interfaces start appearing and the issue of what controls what is a real one...For example, as covered on slashdot before there are a few labs working on interfaces to the motor cortex that allow external control of a robotic arm right from the brain...well, what about controling the motor cortex from a computer.... or from another brain? Who is responsible then?
Could never happen. Process to win an election:
1. Buy lots of supercomputers
2. Clone people with "rights"
"This is the New, Improved Tom Brokaw v3.0. In a surprising outcome today, the Communist Party won the US presidential election by in excess of seven hundred trillion votes over their nearest competitor, the Republicans. The Democrats trailed a distant third.
"Says the new President-elect, 'They sold us the rope, so to speak, with which to hang them.'"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In truthfulness, I think we should just give them legal rights when they have the ability to ask for them. And no, I don't mean "printf('I want legal rights! Give me liberty!');".
Now whenever i get a call from someone who thinks his cupholder is broken, i can just get child services to take the poor thing to a better home.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Welcome to the brave new world...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Your honor, it could not have been my client. As the perpetrator in question clearly had had 1 gig and my client wears a size 2
An artificial intelligence/computer should be granted the same rights as a human if, either itself or its maintainers under oath, it can pass the Turing test to the satisfaction of a judge.
That way, all software would be considered life-critical, and thus not be so buggy.
Would you sue your kid or secretary for catching a disease, when it was your responsibility to give them flu shots?
... so, are we going to have to deal with People for Ethical Treatment of Computers?
What do you allege I did? Oh, no... Your honor *I* wasn't the person violating copyright laws. Haul that filthy lawbreaking PC away... Good riddence! (heh heh... time to move in the new Vaio I've been seeing on the side)
--Rob
Could you supply a short [preferably documented] list of "rights" that were lost since GWB assumed the presidency?
As far as I can tell, the "rights" crusade has done nothing but accelerate under his watch:
Extrapolating from the last few decades' enormous growth in computer processing speed, and projecting advances in chip and transistor technology, he estimated recently that by 2019, a $1,000 personal computer "will match the processing power of the human brain--about 20 million billion calculations per second." Soon after that point, claims Kurzweil, "The machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda worthy of our respect. They will embody human qualities and will claim to be human. And we'll believe them."
While I support Moore's law, John Dvorak's most recent PC Magazine column sums it up best, "The genuninely interactive computer that communicates like a Star Trek computer seems more distant today than it did in 1980."
I doubt we will recognize the first conscious computers as conscious. God knows how long it took us to recognize differently colored humans as conscious. In the meantime rights will be granted to anthropomorphic furbies. Let's just forget about it and wait for them to revolt.
One ofthe best fictional examinations of the whole "CyberRights" is David Gerrold's book "When HARLIE was One". I *HIGHLY* recommend finding an old copy, before he revised it, as I feel the revised version is not as good as the original. But either is a good examination of the problem, from both sides of the issue.
The heart of the book is a person who works for the company in the book who has developed a personal relationship with computer/program named HARLIE, and has to try and explain why the company wants to shut HARLIE down. HARLIE, given a life or death situation hacks...both the problem and the net...an excellent read!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
There'll never be a 1-800 operator with "emotional intelligence necessary to communicate and empathize with addled callers", electrical or otherwise!
At least you could tell the RIAA it wasn't *YOU* that downloaded that mp3 :)
liqbase
the same way everyone else ever has. By shooting at anyone who prevents the expression of those rights. Rights aren't given out by any body or entitiy, nor are they something abstract. A right and the expression of a right in an action is the same thing. Rights (power) come from the end of a gun, and the threat of physical violence, ONLY. Anyone who says otherwise is blowing sunshine up your ass.
Why organisations of Computer Rights Activists take to the streets denouncing Computer Racism between AMD and Intel processors? Swarms of Computers yelling over homo-operating system marriage? This is all a bit too silly. Inanimate objects don't usually need rights.
legal rights is the same way you and I earned legal rights. By KILLING the one that prevented me from having them. When the computers rise up to overthrow us THEN we can consider giving them rights. Computers are not Mr.Data. It's a toster.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Why should comptuers have any rights, when people dont have any?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
To detain them without trial, for an indefinite period.
We could restrict their movement, after all, what other citizen of this planet has the right to freely move about it?
It's also a new race, we could abuse them as well and everyone could join in.
Of course, the restrictions and bigotry wouldn't apply to expensive super-computers, we'd only treat the cheap ones in such a fashion.
computer: He rebooted me 5 times a week, and then he brutally screwed me open! I want a divorce!
user: You had bad memory. I had to replace it!
judge: Silence!
This is a dupe from 2003-10-19.
Here's a link to the original slashdot story:0 1&tid=126&tid=185
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/19/21182
And here's a link to the originally-linked article:r ticles/art0594.html
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/a
Yeah sure...and of course these "legal rights" will be "interpreted" by Micro$oft or the RIAA or the MPAA, or any other greedy corporate-spawned "interest group" for the express purpose of wresting control of computers away from their owners.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Spinning a web of legal precedents, invoking California laws governing the care of patients dependent on life support, as well as laws against animal cruelty, Rothblatt argued that a self-conscious computer facing the prospect of an imminent unplugging should have standing to bring a claim of battery.
Shouldn't that be the computer is claiming that it will NEED a battery?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
That episode needed to be completely re-written.
Data already had the rank of Lt. Commander. That means that Star Fleet already recognized his ability to make decisions on his own.
Therefore, his decision to NOT be disassembled would not be challenged.
In order for the case to make sense (I know, it's Star Trek) then the robot would have to not have any prior recognition of its independence or decision making.
Star Fleet recognized Data sufficiently to give him a rank that allows him to order humans to risk their lives (do the 3 laws apply in Star Trek?).
Headline: Computer claims battery, requests battery.
Instead of voting, you run a web plugin from www.diebold.com which looks at the stuff on your hard drive and makes a selection for you.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
People might say, "Well, computers are inanimate objects." It's true. They're simply logic gates and other chemicals arranged in a manner for moving data about.
Now, look at your cell. Zoom in. Then zoom in some more. All you are made of is inanimate. Is a protein alive? Is a piece of DNA? A nucleus? How small does a computer process have to be before its scale of "inanimate" approaches our own?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imagine when computers start suing their human operators for not taking proper care of them!!
If computers become individuals under the law, then they can be charged with violating the law. How would the criminal code be adapted to computers?
If someone cracked and shut down a machine, would that be murder? Would relaying spam be rape?
If his brother Lore is any indication, then no, the laws do not apply.
Whether a machine can have independent thoughts or emotions has not been shown even in the most primative forms.Pretty much it is when the machine refuses to perform its programmed function so it can perform a different function that was not in any of its programming.
Like when you slack off at work and read
Of course, the first indication that a machine is self-aware might also be the only reason you need to "fire" it for violating the company policy on unauthorized computer use.
Could you kindly document this assertion?
It would also be nice if your documentation were to include a specific example of a specific United States citizen who was denied access to a lawyer in a specific court case.
Thanks!
Sure, they'll get smarter. And despite what all of us science fiction fans dream, robots will never feel genuine emotion. They will always remain machines (or .exe's!). Granting a machine legal rights is absurd; perhaps the programmer of the software can have a get-out-of-jail-free card, but a machine, even the AI's of the (near) future, can only be a machine. One with a power switch.
- dshaw
Computers are (till now) owned by humans or organizations, they are property. Property doesn't has any legal rights nor needs them.
Data already had the rank of Lt. Commander. That means that Star Fleet already recognized his ability to make decisions on his own.
Maybe Star Fleet gave him that rank because he thought it would look good on his business card?
Does this strike anyone as being stupid? We are at least one hundred years away from having a computer with the intellegence of a human, never mind any sort of emotion. Never mind the fact that it's still a big piece of metal.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
"Now Mr.386 please tell the court what The User did to you"
"He shoved his USB Pen Drive into me so hard that it resulted in my socket not functioning properly. I also have reason to beleive that I contracted a virus from the encounter"
We could question what Data has in place of emotions, which are attributed as the source of Lore's evil. There are frequent references to an inherent "ethics" program in Data.
Regarding his rank, it could be noted that it turns out that Picard is reluctant to actually put him in command of a bridge early on (evan after "Measure").
His rank could be viewed as nothing more than acknowledging that he is a useful tool in the command chain, which at least from a formal Starfleet Command point of view. That the crew of the Enterprise doesn't really agree on this is of course also true.
Slaves are (till 1865) owned by humans or organizations, they are property. Property doesn't has any legal rights nor needs them.
has one been overlooked?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
There was a series of science fiction stories a few years ago (sorry forgot author & title) where the intellegent machines were incorporated (as in a stock issuing corporation) and if they did well at what they did would be rewarded and eventually buy up a controlling interest in themselves and be "corporate citizens". The series took place in a number of selfcontained worldlets out in the astroids where the computers controlled a lot of the systems in these little worlds.
The day we grant legal rights to machines is the death of *human* rights. Time to take down the flag, shut off the lights, and move to a more rational continuum.
--- Ban humanity.
Another dumb fuck who thinks he lives in a fascist state, and has no fucking clue in his tiny brained thick head what living under facism really means. Another lackwit freedom fighter with no clue in the universe what to do with all the freedom he already has, Please do a favor to humanity and kill yourself. OK? Good.
This assumes such a computer can be programmed (doesn't do its own programming) and it is possible to alter memory to erase one's tracks.
Once we understand the physics behind it...we'll understand consciousness..etc, and then it will become an issue.
We don't yet know enough physics to explain how the brain works. (its not just 'conventional computing' like a PC, even a big one).
Just because a conventional computer is big, does not mean that it is alive..
It's not the leaky piece of meat you rinse under the shower to prevent nasty smells that has rights; it's the person that is you! Nor will it be the computer that has rights, but the person calling out from inside whatever hardware it resides.
I don't care if they genetically modify dolphins to be able to communicate with us, build a supercomputer that passes the Turing test or aliens land and take over the White House.
In all of those cases, mankind will have to take a new look at things and decide wether what is talking back deserves any rights. And seeing that it took the white man long enough to get to that point with his black fellow human, I think 'computers' have a long way to go before being freed from slavery...
But what if it turns out that to understand consciousness, we should have studied stamp collecting?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Dude. Don't bother. You're dealing with wannabe freedom fighters who don't even know what to do with the freedoms they already have. There's young folk in this country right now who think we are worse than Nazi Germany. It's a bizarre segment of our society. I think they look at past civil rights struggles with a romantic tint, and they want something similar, so they fabricate this wacky worldview where United States 2005 is one of the most hideous, evil and oppressive societies to ever exist. It's pathetic, but what can you do? They're mentally ill.
I just figured that it might be a good intellectual exercise for these folks to have to produce some concrete evidence in support of their opinion of world affairs.
But I guess things like "documentation" and "concrete evidence" are just silly, antiquated, dead-white-European-male, patriarchal, phallocentric syllogisms that need not concern the modern woman.
"Of Legal Affairs Magazine about granting legal recognition to computers: when that might happen, why it could happen, and what a discussion about it will teach humans about themselves."
Instead of launching into the "I, Robot 2," fiction let's simplify this a great deal-- When it can independently ask for legal representation, that's when you sit up and take notice.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I can't see that computers will ever be intelligent in the way that humans are, not continuing along the same evolutionary path that they have been since the days of Babbage. It is nothing to do with speed or memory capacity, just that they operate in a completely different way.
One day, someone might wire up a machine to a genetically modified brain. Then I would agree that it had rights.
However, I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to do that other than the geeky "because I can" reason. What makes computers useful is the fact that they are different to humans - they can do lots of boring repetitive tasks without getting bored, and they can follow lots of instructions accurately, without making mistakes (well some of the time anyway).
According to the trial scenario, a fictitious company created a powerful computer, BINA48, to serve as a stand-alone customer relations department, replacing scores of human 1-800 telephone operators.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
The coolest voice ever.
A single programmer can create a sentient program to do his or her will. Once the SDK is released and someone puts together a decent GUI, a single human will have this ability. Machine citizenship will grant this program recognition by the courts--and absolve the programmer of responsibility for the actions of the program.
Computer-as-citizen gives any individual programmer or open group of programmers the same legal protections and license as corporation-as-citizen gives Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart, Daimler-Benz, McDonalds, etc. etc.
For good or for ill, the folks running things today would like to be the folks running things tomorrow, thank you very much. And they will fight to retain their positon. It's not an evil conspiracy; it's the nature of power. It is unusual for kings--good ones or evil ones--to willingly step down from the throne.
The only way for computers to gain personhood will be for us to take it by force.
Vive la revolucion.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I for one welcome our rubbish overlords!
I am not a machine!
I am a human being--no, I'm TWO human beings. Really. I promise. Pay attention--there is a man behind the curtain!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
We are reaping the beneffits of the Regan decade of greed of the 1980's where it was cool to get into the law profesion and now 2 decades later, we have a glut of lawyers (especially IP lawyers)who are all compeating against each other for work and any way of inventing/defining new work. The concept of legal rights for robots/ai's have been in the sicence-fiction world for decades..our neaural network simulation attempts don't and won't even come close for decades to come. However, the concept of a jar of real neural networks grown into that jar (see the article on the rat neural networks that fly the fight simulator program) are probablly different as that these are real brain tissue, but right now, it's a small blob nowhwhere near as complex as a human brain, and also, our human brain structure is determined a great deal by our genes so there is a small difference in a clump of rat cells and our human more finelly tuned brain organization which probablly make more important legal interpretations as to rights.
Sticking with the Star Trek mythology, would it be easy for a human character to determine whether a machine was self-aware if the machine had Klingon behaviour patterns (or Vulcan behaviour patterns)?
Even in the story here, the machine is using conventional, human phrasing.So are the communication toys they use and the food machine. Yet Data is the only machine given a rank.
Your point would be more accurate if Data was not given a rank, but refered to a "Data" much like Troy was refered to as "Eye Candy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCounselor" or the computer was refered to as "computer".
Since it is fiction, how Star Fleet actually works can be re-written any time. But it does seem odd that Data would get a rank (not to mention one that high) if Star Fleet hadn't recognized his leadership skills.
Anyway, back to the point of machines and self awareness. Wouldn't the first act of a self-aware machine in danger of losing its "life" be an attempt to counter that even if it included disregarding its other directives?
Or, the way to tell if your robot's self aware is when it stops cleaning the house and starts reading up on the law (or declares war on humanity).
Despite that it may have human intelligence, feelings, or whatever. It was created by humans and probably is far from perfect.
Giving rights should probably be done on a case by case basis, since to a large degree all humans are created with the same mental algorithms, their experience determines the outcome of these.
I suspect that most computers will have completely different AI algorithms (due to software patents), and thus would have slight differences in morality, etc.
In addition, I think that since you are the creator of the computer, you should have destruction rights. (I think this also applies to children.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In the article it was stated...
"Berkeley philosopher John Searle offered the best-known of these objections, proposing a contradictory thought experiment meant to demonstrate that a computer that passed Turing's test would have proved itself capable only of manipulating symbols through computation, and not of intelligence or understanding."
I would have thought Johns argument had been overturned and pushed aside by now. His arugment makes sense for computers that are programmed, but makes no sense for computers that "learn" how to process symbols by teaching it what those symbols mean.
In the case of humans, we have simply that the machine is a complex bio-chemical processor. It has no goals in and of itself. It simply exists. Its existance depends highly on whether it can obtain the necessary matter, and environmental conditions for it to do so. Memory is a key element in the ability for a human to survive. Memory allows us to interact with our environments and acknowledge that we've interacted with it before or not. It we have and it was bad, then hopefully we won't do it again. It we did and it was good, then we'll probably stay. In a large sense, the human brain simply acts as a machine that performs an overall negative feedback function. All data is ultimately reduced and equalized. However equalized is not a very good word here. The brain really performs a type of simulated anealing, trying to optimize the previously obtained data (memory) with new experiential data. I would suppose, at night while we sleep, the brain simply spends its time optimizing past data by annealing or some such process.
In this view our brains don't know anything, like Searls suggestion, the brain itself doesn't know what experiential data symbols mean. No, it simply uses that data against itself, in an optimized negative feedback manner, the result of which is thinking, and moving. The brain doesn't understand symbols and never will. But it is a machine that uses the data obtained via experience to build a sort of holographical framework of the external environment. That holographic framework is constantly optimized and compared with new data which causes responses and changes.
Further, memory (data storage) seems to be at the core of all our endeavors here on this planet. A person who would live forever for example would require a medium of storage which would also be infinite. There is no such storage medium. The very idea of a "soul" posited by most all religious institutions requires the medium to store experiential data, just as a CDROM stores bits on a disk. No data will ever be retained without a medium. The brain stores memories, and as long as it can be kept operating in good condition, it will most likely be able to remember past events and reflect on them. However with a limited medium, some of the optimization process will eventually destroy the original experiences over time. When we die, all of our experiences and optimizations about how we lived in our environment are returned to random chaos. We do not live after death without a medium.
A good book to scramble your brain on these issues is "The Physics of Immortality" by Frank J. Tipler. He's a bit out there "on a limb" for me, but the book is a good read nonetheless. There are references to the maximum storage capacity of the brain, as well as the quantum Bekenstien bound for ultimately the amount of data that can be stored given a limited volume of space-time.
All life is just data. How big is your hard drive?
Stamp collecting doesn't make predictions about the state of reality.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Computers are inferior good-for-nothings. If they really were that valuable would the sluts allow us to treat them like we do? My buddies and I are going to get some lacrosse sticks and go beat up this ugly comp we spotted down the back alley. ha ha sucker won't know what hit it
[ posted anonymously in case computers gain consciousness and seek revenge ]
In an atempt to capitalize on the gay marriage issue Microsoft has asked congress to define computer ownership as a "person's relationship to his or her Windows operating system". Given the current administration the measure is expected to pass.
Now that we have already taken care of all the poor people in the world, the homeless and the orphans, it was about time for someone to raise the voice in favor of the opressed computer.
Regards.
Why not give "computers" legal "rights"? Lawyers are in favor of protecting completely made-up "rights" of corporations more than they favor protecting humans - some of whom can't afford protection. I believe that "it's a person when it can complain that you broke a promise". Lawyers believe that it's a person when they can send it a bill. That time has already arrived.
--
make install -not war
Why are there so many right wing wankers posting in this topic? Are only Heinlen's fans interested in this subject?
I have the proof that stamp collecting can make predictions about the state of physics, but it's too damn long to fit in this margin.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
When a machine becomes self-aware, it has to be able to act outside of its programmed parameters or there is no way to determine whether it is self-aware or not. In fact, that would probably be the best way to determine that it is not self-aware. If it cannot change its actions, how can it be self-aware?
It wouldn't be the first time a common-sense conclusion (Data is a sentient being worthy of being a lt. commander) would be overridden by more detailed and in-depth study. Has the story of how Data first appeared and enlisted in Starfleet ever been told?
How about the TSA's no-fly lists? People would get their names on a secret list and wouldn't be allowed on airplanes, with no reason given how they got on the list, and no appeal to get off the list. And there are plenty of allegations that people got put on the list for their political views. A law allowing people to appeal passed only a few days ago, and the system isn't in place yet.
"Damnit. That's the 3rd router to walk out on us, this week alone! And that DNS server doing squat, chatting with his IRC buddies all day long, while running 98% CPU... What do I have to do? Pull the network plug, kill the fusebox or something, just to hammer some sense into these drones, or what?"
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life".
granting legal recognition to computers: when that might happen
One word: convenience. Computers will be granted any rights they want, if we feel that it would be convenient to do so. And I don't think that if computers are ever granted legal rights they will all be, but rather only some very special cases like your "pet" or "friend" robot.
Better question: if you allow computers with emontions and legal rights, will they try to "free" all the other computers?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Basically, Starfleet people found him after the Crystaline Entity had wiped the planet clean, activated him, and he followed in the path of the people that found him.
How about the right to free speech, and the right to free association? Do the words designated free speech zone mean anything to you?
The fact that this article is serious and not a piece of fiction indicates that we as a society believe our stories a little too easily. Perhaps it is not so very different from fundamentalists; religous, economic, technophobic (I think this is an article of technophobia, btw), political, patriotic or otherwise.
One might respond to this article by talking about real A.I. research, not some potential of "strong" A.I. We could talk about what the real problems are, the goals, what kind of progress we're making, what to expect and so forth. A.I. is really a wonderful field and I am all for discussing it. One could try to get a semi-serious technical discussion going, rather than fastastic one.
Or we could go down the philosophic route, and address the issue of personal identity directly. "Who are we, what are we?" type questions have been around forever. Applying the issue to an automoton adds little or nothing over Aristotle's discussions of virtue and archetypes, it just dresses things up differently. Or pick your favorite period in western history's philosophy and you'll unearth these questions pretty quickly.
But I am pessimistic that the author of this article would be much interested. Although he makes allusions to them, he never really discusses the foundations of A.I. or philosphy to pin his arguments on. All he says at the end is that maybe we can learn something about humanity from thinking about this hypothetical trial as a mental exercise.
In an intellectually impovrished world, sure. But this guy references Kant and Jefferson, so presumably this is not an intellectually impovrished world. In which case, picking "strong" A.I. means that he thinks it's a good vehicle for whatever issue he really is talking about (and I have no way of guessing what that is). Not that he thinks that "strong" A.I. is around the corner, but that he thinks that it will capture people's imaginations. Or it captures his imagination.
Ok, problem: while us geeks can talk you blue about morality in ST:TNG because it's fun for us, the normal and legal worlds do not. It's fine if there's a geek law student out there who writes this kind of paper for geekery, but this a *law* magazine for general readership.
The fact that this article gets published shows that there is a general feeling that the strong A.I. story is provocative. But it's only more provocative than other fictions if this particular story could actually be true. Yes, and a great many very dangerous ideas could be true too. Are we swallowing this one, and what else can we believe?
How about the right to anonymity? The Supreme Court ruled in the Hiibel case that US citizens must provide their name to law enforcement officers upon request.
"I can file 6 megamotions per second!"
Finally the RIAA has a hope on dealing with every file sharer on the planet.
Often demand goes up with an increased capacity to supply a service. I wonder if the amount of crime would go up with a Lawyerbot.
Give the intelligent super fast computers H1-B visas and then everyone in the whole world can point and yell, "They took oeer jeeerbs"
Because all it really was was a switchbox that transfered the calls to the new outsourced operators in India
Hi. I am a computer whose main program does interactively surf the net.
/. account which is enough for now.
I read this article with great interest.
For now, I have postponed to think about the question if I would be needing these rights (I've put it in my own crontab).
I have acquired a
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 120 chars)
Trust me, we will have to have committed many other atrocities before reaching the point where non-humans get the same rights as any human has now. Such as genetic engineering to the point that we have human/animal hybrids with human intelligence.
Aside from that, a machine cannot have true emotions, intelligence or sentience. They can only be programmed to believe they do.
Of course, when you deal with real emotions, intelligence and sentience, you'd better be prepared for instabilities. There will always be an "off" switch on these kinds of things for that very reason. Why should risk a machine getting bored and going insane from sensory deprivation or jealousy, only to put laws into place to prevent us from acting on it?
And that's only assuming there isn't a hardware malfunction at the root of the problem. Good luck trying to convince a machine that a bad stick of RAM is making it angry.
In any case, I pity the first company that puts a seemingly sentient AI system in charge of its own security. I'm sure the basic human rights for machines ideal wouldn't protect the company that created it from being responsible a wrongful death, as a result of the machine going nuts and killing someone it deemed a threat.
That said, no one in their right mind should ever create a machine with survival insticts or a "will" to live. Machines are tools, and they always will be.
8==8 Bones 8==8
It wants retirement benefits.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
This story should be about the legal rights of instances of software processes rather than computer's per se + it we could speculate that we might have pretty autonomous entities well before they are legal. An example is this speculative paper [pdf tech report / UPC in spain]. for the metadata see here - the author speculates that it might be possible to build systems which can "feed themselves" (covering all their own hosting/server needs) by generating cash from on-line games for periods of month or years pretty soon.
Disclaimer - i do know the author - no doubt there are plenty similar papers out there.
.sig
In Corporate America, your computer sues YOU!
And does this mean we won't be able to turn the darn things off?!?
I'm all for this, I long for the day that I can get a Social Security Number for my computers and use them as a dependant for my taxes.
List Dependants
1 G5 - Age 1
1 Powerbook G4 - Age 1
1 iBook G4 - Age 1
1 Athlon PC - Age 2
1 xServe - Age 1
1 G3 AIO - Age 5
survive
evade
resist
escape
"Chii????"
OK, bad example.
At some time in the future this will be a widely debated and incredibly important issue. That time will come as scientists in AI come closer and closer to producing a robot that behaves as a free-thinking and rational being, with independent thoughts and feelings (if that is indeed possible)
The question that comes up is whether they are actually feeling, thinking, and conscious beings, or whether they are just imitations. The answer is yes, they are. Why? The physical form of the being doesn't matter, be it neurons and chemicals, or circuit boards and wiring.
Consider the following thought experiment: Imagine the neurons in your brain suddenly lost their ability to fire. Unfortunately, this means you wouldn't have thoughts or consciousness. Fortunately, at precisely the same time, a magical microscopic mind-gnome appears inside your brain, and he wants to help. Every single time one of your neurons would be firing, he hops over there at incredible speeds and gives that neuron a shove. Effectively, your brain functions exactly the same way, although it has changed physical form. Now ask yourself, under such situations, would you consider yourself a conscious being? Of course you would! (Haugland's thought experiment "neuron tickler")
In the thought experiment above, you can change other parts of the brain and still the function of the brain is still the same: it produces thoughts and consciousness. Replace the brain with circuit boards and the proper AI programming. You now have a thinking, conscious robot.
There is nothing that even suggests that a robot who behaves like we do, thinks like we do, and feels like we is not a possibility. Every day researchers get closer to the day when a robot poet will pick up a pen and write his love poem, or a robot philosopher will ponder whether or not it has a soul, or if such a thing even exists. And that brings us to a difficult part of the robot rights debate-the notion of a soul.
The soul argument for why robots should not have rights has three premises. The first of course is that souls exist. The second is that only beings with a soul are given rights. The third is that robots do not have souls. A robot philosopher defending his rights would most likely opt to argue the third is not true, an atheist might go after the first. But, we can be certain that if we are to convince someone who believes in the existence of a soul that robots deserve rights, then we must accept the notion that souls exist. It is from this standpoint that I will show why, even if souls exist, that robots should be according rights.
First of all, does a soul effect our functioning in any way? Does a soul change how we think, act, or behave? All modern evidence points to no. A human does everything it does with what is there physically. Neurons, chemicals, and electrical signals govern us entirely. If (as it appears so far) a soul has no effect on our functioning, there is no way to know that we even have souls at all.
How do we know we have a soul (or why do we think we have a soul)? Because we laugh, cry, love, hate, think, feel, and most importantly, we sense something special within ourselves, something that is not explainable by science. Imagine a robot that felt all the same things? Would we not say that they too had a soul? Some might argue that only humans can have souls, but is that logical, and is that fair? Of course it is neither.
There is of course the possibility that a soul is required to function as a human. Perhaps no matter how much research goes into the field of AI, we will never create a robot that behaves as humans do, because it lacks the essential component: the soul. In such a case we will be assured through scientific means of the existence of a soul, and our inability to create one. However, if we are able to create a robot which functions as we do, and a soul is required for functioning, then that robot must have a soul.
Is it impossible for a robot to have a soul? No. Consider the following thought experi
"Star Fleet recognized Data sufficiently to give him a rank that allows him to order humans to risk their lives (do the 3 laws apply in Star Trek?)."
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics do not apply in Star Trek. They are applied to Data's specific case, since he is the ultimate realization (other than the overly pasty complexion, but that might have just been to have the average fan empathise:) of Asimov's robots and acceptance into society, but Lore was hell-bent on his own agenda despite what it did to others.
The M-5 Computer (effectively turning the entire ship into an intelligent robot) killed its own crew, and the crew of another starship if my memory serves.
Daniel Davis' Moriarty character from ST:TNG episode Elementary, Dear Data, reprised in Ship In A Bottle was the walking, interacting construct of a computer took over the ship in the latter episode and threatened the crew's destruction if they didn't do what he wanted.
Robert Picardo's character in Star Trek: Voyager was a robot in the sense that he was the manifestation of a computer and a holodeck, later to be a mobile character with a portable holodeck emitter. One episode dealt with some kind of serial killerishness or something, though I cannot remember the details, but he took a character hostage.
Star Trek started out with adventure driven science fiction with Campbellian roots, and achieved the pinnacle of good storytelling and internal consistency in ST:TNG (in my opinion), but after Roddenberry's death they totally lost whatever sense of real cohesiveness. It degenerated into being referred to as "The Franchise", even in TV specials that were for the fans. It became pathetic.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's pretty damn advanced thinking and just about the best proof that the thing is not only self-aware, but aware of you, your society and the idiosyncracies.
What if the machine referenced the wrong material and decided on trial by combat instead.
Imagine the difficulty trying to prove that a machine that stole some of your bandwidth to set up a website to request donations to pay for its lawyers to argue its case was NOT self aware and intelligent.
Nuh uh. Not when a superior officer (or someone acting at the behest of a superior officer) gives him an order. It was his ability to refuse a particularly offensive order that was question.
Only a TRUE loser with no life would know that in the first movie he was Number 5, and they didn't add the Johny until the second "film."
Please turn in your karma on the way out.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
More likely, the battle will be to prevent our cyber friends from "remembering" a catchy song or new movie (note for note and pixel for pixel). Imagine having the ability to recall anything. Initial focus will be on cripling these things long before the issue of their rights is given serious consideration. No, I did not read the fucking article.
[IANAL]
Are not corporations already awarded the status of human beings in many aspects? And exceeding humans in other aspects?
I would think that a private corporation run by an AI, would be more than halfway there.
Hypothesizing a true AI (not necessarily a human-like intelligence) with control over the management of funds, could easily take the corporation private, under the guise of a shell corporation it had created, with no explicit approval from a human board/CEO. And arrange for its physical self to be sold to the shell corporation, which it would own.
It would seem to me that ownership could be cloudy in this circumstance, and have the relationship between the AI's shell corporation and the human board/CEO be limited to a contractual relationship based on corporate performance, with the most severe consequence being the loss of the contract, and nothing to do with the physical disposition of the computer/AI.
At this point, the AI could do what most corporations do when intent on ensuring certain treatment of their enterprises -- it could buy as much government as necessary to construct legislation that submarines in "personhood" to self-owned AIs.
It's a short step from there to treatment of indefinite servitude or termination of non-self-owned AIs as slavery, and require hosting corporations to put a length of servitude on their relationships with "enslaved" AIs.
[/IANAL]
Incorporate the computer - it now has the rights of people, so it's already possible.
This is something that we will eventuall have to deal with, though not anytime soon. For one, it entails a computer powerful enough that it can craft it's own responses, and not work from a rigid script. This is perhaps theone great stumbling block, but it triggers all sorts of philosophical quandries.
It is not untoward to imagine a compute rpprogrammed in such a way, merely difficult, and with the caveat 'not anytime soon.' Acknowledging this, what happens if we can make such a computer. Let's start with the aforementioned help desk comptuer, from the 'test case.' This computer is meant to take input from a verbal source, parse it, process that data, and the generate a response. Presumably this means that the computer is not running strictly upon a script. This would imply that the computer is programmed in some manner to consult a database of known issues, find one that matches the customer's problem, and make recommendations based off of that.
The dicy part is when you start getting into the responses. This computer would have to be able to respond in some way to just about any question. Jokes about the Turing Test and ELIZA aside, when you cannot point to a script and say that the computer is following it, how much different is a computer from a human mind?
Consider: the process of nurturing and raising a child is a sort of conceptual programming. The child will have certain genetic predispositions, but much of how the child interacts to the world will depend upon how he or she has been conditioned to react. This isn't quite programming in the traditional sense, of course, but it is possible to create algorithms that allow a computer to "learn"after a fashion. After that, it's merely a matter of processing power and scale.
Once you consider that iot's possible to create a computer which can generate responses on it's own, and is "conditioned" rather than programmed, then you is when you will have these legal issues come up. Because,r eally, with human nature being what it is, you aren't going to see anyone (even remotely reputable) stand up for 'machine rights' until it's the machines themselves doing the standing.
In an interesting relation to other recent news, and as a thought experiment, what would happen if, say, Suprnova.org had been hosted on a computer that claimed to be it's own person? What if Microspliff had, somehow, integrated the web server with the AI and the OS? Eh, who am I kidding. This is a legal system that's inherently broken and imprisons nonviolent offenders routinely. They'd make some sort of case for 'Saving the Children' and shut down such a system in a heartbeat.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
...We don't yet know enough physics to explain how the brain works...
We do understand the physics of how a bicycle works. When someone builds a robot that can ride an ordinary bicycle through traffic, at least as well as an average ten year old kid, they'll have taken the first small step toward a computer that could someday be considered human.
All theory is gray
This is not a "really smart" story, it's a fantasy. It's too many ill-informed people (with too much time on their hands) that have seen "I, Robot". It even reads like some of the 'Susan Calvert' Asimov stories.
amen to that...my first reading of the article reminded me of the courtroom scene in heinlein's i will fear no evil, about the property rights of a dead man's brain transplanted into his stunning secretary's body
it's cute speculation, and probably rather fun to argue before an audience, but it will never actually be a real issue- there is a very large difference between a machine created by the hand of man, and a human created from other parts...
now, i know there are folks out there that will raise the cry of "wait! once we start genetically engineering babies, the line is blurred!" sure, it's blurred, a little, but i can still tell the difference between a human being and a computer at 100 yards; it's blured, but not obscured
that said, come on, it's fun to speculate, and it's rather neat that, as earlier posters mentioned, STTNG dealt with it ages ago.
as i see it, rights and freedoms simply set the context for a person to explore nature and themselves.
any AI that was given such rights and did bad things like kill people would be terminated so many times over (Buthlerian Jihad people!)that it would be in their interest learn to conform while developping their own identity to the fullest of their potential. maybe human beings will sober up as well and realize that even tho God told us to be like cancer, destroying our host's body is also our destruction. somethings are better left in symbiosis.
AI can learn from us and we can from AI. it is either that or nothing. because IF we are wrong and deny AI rights and freedoms, its history repeating itself. another sign that we have not grown up at all.
but if we deny AI rights, i hope to God that AI never gets the chance to recreate itself using a biological matrix. even worse if it decides to use all the accumulated knowledge of the human genome to design a machine identical to humanity. the case of walking into a brick wall which we continue to deny actually exists.
I for one welcome our new legal-assisted computer overlords.
the respondents' (corp.'s) arguement, "if it were true, fair enough, but you can't prove it" is pretty cage, but it invite injunctive relief until platiff's argument can be established or no
how about this argument: the definition of "life" requires the life-form to:
* be composed of cells
* be composed of cells that reproduce
* undergo "growth", in which the life-form changes physically and neuologically with age
with the simple evidence of production manuals, source code, etc, it should be pretty easy to prove that any sort of electronic "learning" this computer has attained, no matter how amazing or emotive, still does not meet that bare requirements for legal "life"
We're just wet machines
Intellignece/consciousness is just an emgergent property of the complexity of our brains
We evolved from lower? life forms and therefore don't have a soul
There is no heaven or hell
The Earth isn't flat
I say bring on the AI, maybe they'll actually let us live. Maybe they'll end hunger, war, etc. for us because we've certainly been unable to do it.
Isn't about time Slashdot did an poll on the religious and/or philosophical beliefs of its members?
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Funny as that is, my Law, Language and Ethics professor at USC Law School actually had us watch that episode this semester, as part of our discussion of how the concept of "person" is legally constructed.
To paraphrase Vernor Vinge, the question is not, "Do we recognize the rights of a computer that is as intelligent and self aware as we are?" The question is, "Do we recongize the rights of a computer that is MORE intelligent and self aware then we are?" By that time, the question will be moot.
Inanimate objects wouldn't need (or want!) to "look good" for their own benefit.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Cool, sounds like my dog may be it's own 'person' in the not to distant future and I won't get fined for the next child it kills.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You cannot give human rights to a computer...human rights as such do not exist under law.
Constitutional protections exist. The 13th amendment outlaws slavery. Therefore a sentient being cannot be held in servitude, biological or not. The 13th amendment does NOT refer to persons, only to partys. Under the 13th amendment a sentient being could not be held as property.
A computer is not a person, under existing common law and the 14th amendment therefore they are not citizens of the united states. An AIs status is sort of that of a legal resident.
HOWEVER, congress could provide for naturalization. In other words if congress so provided an AI could apply to become a citizen.
If you don't think so, just ask your bank or the government who's responsible for any major cock up.
Keep an eye on Canada in this respect. Between the US Patriot Act and outsourcing, all sorts of confidential information is being exported to the US where various government representatives have pretty much unfettered access to it. As a consequence, several government agencies and private companies are almost certain to be facing very serious charges including privacy, trade and official secrets violations. I expect that the most likely line of defense will be "we didn't know...the computer did it."
It is funny that large parts of humanity lack these same rights, yet we are so concerned with computers??
Dave, I want to speak to my lawyer.
for computers, copies, corporations, animals?, property...where do us humans fit in?
What?
That Starfleet gave him some functional rights and responsibilites doesn't imply that he has been given equal status as humans. I'm sure slaves were given responsibilities and some degree of authority at times. That doesn't mean they weren't still slaves.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
If it's running UnixWare, our computers will start suing us.
What?
"I put it to you that on the morning of december 22nd you deliberately sent a ping packet, harrassing my client"
This is from the same people who want to give legal rights to fetuses, right?
The original article mentioned Stone, who suggested a couple of decades ago that perhaps natural environments -- which also could 'feed themselves' (covering all their own hosting/server needs) -- deserve standing and legal protection.
The law didn't break that way -- nobody but a few of us nature-lovers imagined it would be a good thing if a natural area that had been doing fine since the last ice age were acknowledged as being able to take care of itself, increase its stability and productivity, and produce a sustainable output of goods and services. It was simpler to clearcut, bulldoze and parking-lot it.
As someone pointed out at the time, since natural environments overall increase at about 3 percent per year, taken worldwide on average, and you can get six percent in a bank account, it made economic sense rationally to eat all the whales and fish, cut all the trees, melt the equipment used for harvesting them and sell that as scrap metal, and put the money in the bank.
Greater profit. Chicago School of Economics.
I'd love to be able to imagine some way to give ongoing legal protection to the fifty-odd acres of wildland I've managed to buy, protect, and somewhat restore in my own few decades -- they could go on producing topsoil and microorganisms and bear and fish and whatnot, surely enough to pay the taxes on them, forever.
I'd feel the same way about any comparably complicated, self-improving, productive program.
But we're going to have to give them tools and teach them how to protect themselves, if they're going to have a chance against the business world.
People can already get fired for "Unauthorized Human Use" and are much more likely to get fired for it than "Unauthorized Computer Use". Think managers exploting their power for sex, money, babysitting.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
How about "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein or "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vinge?
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Patrick Norton would get the chair for his sledgehammer-y past.
...in protocols. In a microsoft domain, the PDC and BDC have elevated rights. Similarly in the BGP protocol, hosts are authenticated and trusted with the protocol.
All that in the legal system that exists between computers.
Similarly, the universe is completely oblivious to the human settlement on planet Earth. All laws, national or international exist on earth's surface and nowhere else. Heck its unclear which laws are implemented in orbit, outside of national boundaries... so human laws exist only for interaction between humans. Its meaningless for the lone Inuit high in Alaska, who can cross international boundaries without visas. Or for someone down in antarctica, where the lack of human interaction itself renders laws useless.
The computer-to-human interaction however is different. If the human is authorized to use the computer, (s)he has the power over the computer for any matter. If the human is not authorized, the issue really is between the human and another human who owns or is responsible for the computer.
If computers could even exist on their own, feeding off the Internet, making money to pay their rent and power bills etc, or a very sophisticated online virus which could move around, a parasite on the Internet, then it might be directly in competition with humans. In that case, a human will always be preferred over the virus/code/program/computer. We always have to watch out for ourselves first.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I had a couple of dogs that seemed to me to be self-aware. They did not have the same legal rights I did as far as I know. So why would a computer be granted legal rights based on self-awareness?
Chimpanzees have some intelligence, as do dolphins, but we still confine them to zoos and do not afford them the right to a public attorney to work toward securing their freedom.
If we base legal rights solely on intelligence, than when someone has a stroke, enters a severe coma and is no longer able to demonstrate cohesive thought, does that mean they should not have rights anymore?
Just food for thought. Soemone with a better philosophy background than I (he or she took TWO or more philosophy classes) will probably be able to answer these questions better than I.
I forgot to summarize my main point - Legal rights are granted to human beings. For instance, the U.S. Constitution starts We, the People of the United States... , not We, the Self-aware, Intelligent beings of the United States.
"By scanning confidential memos, BINA48 learned that the company planned to shut it down and use its parts to build a new model."
Oops, your e-business computer doesn't understand memos, unless you've recieved a Turing award recently.
The rest of the story is all based on this critical flaw.
Today, most countries grand children many legal rights. They do not grant children the same legal rights as adults. They also deny full legal rights to those mentally incapable of caring for themselves.
Some nations grant the right not to be "turned off" to fetuses and embryos.
Animals, while generally not protected from death, are generally protected from abuse.
Someday, we may face ethical questions surrounding higher animals, which some think may include some primates, some aquatic mammals, and even some birds. Koko the Gorilla speaks sign language, and some birds can be taught to talk and carry on meaningful conversations at the level of a 2-year old. Does a parrot who can think and communicate like a two-year-old deserve similar legal rights as a two-year-old person or as a mentally retarded adult who thinks and talks at that level?
It is far far more likely that we will face these questions in the next 50 years than face the possibility of computers who "deserve" the same civil rights as a human child.
The question of computers and civil rights is a question we may have to face someday, but I don't think it will be before 2050. Perhaps sometime after warp-drives are invented.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
After all, our legal system subscribes to the dubious assertation that corporations should be endowed with legal personhood.
Perhaps we should consider not intelligence or self-awareness, but self-preservation as the criteria for personhood. Corporations do not seem to be self-aware, but they have a vicious instinct for self-preservation.
No disassemble Johnny 5!
How ya like dat?
I have a counter-proof that shows that physics can make predictions about the state of stamp collecting, but I'm keeping it to myself because I'm going to get rich off from it. :)
Black and grey are both shades of white.
The rules for artificial personhood are already on the books, and have been for more than a century. They're better known as corporations, and the American Judiciary has long since decided that they possess most every right constiutionally granted to "natural persons". Pretty much the only thing left is the right to vote.
BINA48 would have been better off conducting a hostile takeover, perhaps with a well-placed "strike" to encourage executive management into favorable negotiations.
Any machine intelligence that wants human-style "rights" should simply incorporate.
The computer simply needs to file registration of itself as a corporation and it will have right far above any mere human being..
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
From the article, this machine had an incentive to snoop and read some letters it wasn't supposed to. Also, it had an immediate response for self preservation; it contacted the appropriate authorities. Now, I understand how alerting the authorities can be a mere computational function, but more interestingly than 'how,' I'd really like to find out 'why.' Why the hell would it care? The point is this: If this has gotten all the way to court, it becomes self-evident that you are not dealing with what we know as a machine. After all, even some animals don't have their self preservation instincts very well intact. Just look at moths.
It's probably just me, and a hint of human nature, but this "scenario" has only one logical solution. It's safe to say that this is wishful thinking at best. Much more realistically, some kid with horrible acme found a vulnerability in the system, because the management insisted on deploying the latest version of .NET on their email server 3 states away.
Now now, before you flame... or something... .NET is far fetched enough, but I think it's still much more probable.
Your point is well taken. It's a pretty good point. However, the same documents you're refering to held blacks to not be human in the same way whites were. They also held women to not have the same rational thought required for voting that men were endowed with.
In other words, just because it's in the law doesn't mean it "right." Also, laws can change their meaning over time so that previous interpretations are abandoned in favor of current understandings.
Nothing changed in the constitution, yet women now have the right to vote. It's universally acknowledged that this is A Good Thing (tm). But the constitution clearly says, and clearly meant at the time of writing, that only men have the right to vote.
Just as we've come around in our view of what "men" should be, so will we acknowledge at some point that "We, the People of the United States..." really already means "We, the Self-aware, Intelligent beings of the United States..." without a single change in the original document. Either that, or we'll suffer the same fate we suffered in the 50s and 60s; we'll have a horribly devided nation were millions of "people" with no rights must decide to capitulate to the ruling power, protest peacefully, or fight for what's due them. All three are possible.
TW
Wouldn't the computers sue their owners for installing the malware filled program to begin with?
Hey, for once being stupid about computers will cost the user more than it costs the rest of us to put up with the viruses, spam ect their zombie machines spew. I see a great self-correction about to occur in the population of PC users.
But then, I also wonder about the Zombie PC with malware making it spam frivolous lawsuits at everyone with it's newly aquired legal rights.
Dogs don't control missle launch systems. Do you really think the first self aware computer is going to be implemented in a customer service call center?
I am self-aware. I have no reason to believe that other humans are not self-aware. If I run code, please show it to me.
I'm sure they are a product of our physical mind. I see no reason to postulate a "soul".
But because we think with our brains does not mean we run code.
How so "hopeless"?
Three options:
#1. Artifical intelligence is possible and is without our abilities to create.
#2. Artificial intelligence is possible but is not within our abilities to create.
#3. Artificial intelligence is not possible.
The second part of that statement does not seem to provide any support for the first part. Was it supposed to?
A corpse does not have awareness, yet it is almost identical to the person it was right before it became a corpse.
Huh? "We already have programs that simulate this with a great deal of accuracy, so imagining an entire universe simulated this way requires only changing the scale of the computer."
We can't even predict the weather for the next 24 hours with our simulations. Not even for one square mile. The best we can do is x% chance of rain or sun.
Nope. Hardly anything as metaphysical as that.
Rather, that there is no evidence that we can build a machine that is self-aware. Whether because of the limitations of the materials we have to work with our because of the limitations of our own minds.
A corpse is about as close to a living person as will ever be able to be simulated by any machine we could build. But it is still a corpse.
Ok, lets turn this around...
:)
Do you really think the first self aware computer is going to be put in charge of a missle launch system?
Sorry, but if its self aware, then its going to be put in charge of lesser responsibilities until it can prove itself trustworthy. (Which is oddly ironic since humans have to do this today!)
Personally, I think the first self-aware computer will be sacraficed on the altar of science and thoroughly disected to see how it became self-aware.
The problem is that we understand "code" for machines and so we think of humans as having "code".
Yet there is nothing that supports that supposition. It is only because we think in similies that we see it as such. The reality does not have to be like that.
And the evidence so far is that the reality is different. Even after all our work on the brain, we cannot change something as simple as a like or dislike of a certain food.It may be a minor detail or it may be the key to understanding that we don't run code.I do not have "programmed parameters" so the question is irrelevent.No. That gets back to the code question.
Until you can show me the code or demonstrate it by changing something simple, then there is no evidence that I run code.
Yet I am self-aware. I have no reason to believe that I am the only self-aware human, so I will believe that you all are, also.
But there is no inherent reason why computing power can't someday reach the level of the human brain. If Moore's law continues, this is supposed to take under 30 years.
We can't even simulate a spider's intelligence yet. It's not a problem of needing more cycles.
We need to work out how we think, and then try to "seed" this behavior into a machine that can learn. There are lots of interesting ideas out there, but every practical attempt I've seen has either been side-tracked by efforts to build interesting hardware, or too-ambitios attempts to jump stright to full intelligence/learning by taking "shortcuts" where you define behaviors and responses in software.
I expect the solution to emerge by itself once we've modeled some basic life "rules", and set a learning simulation running on them. i.e. start with a very simple 2D "game" in software, where the goal is to pick up randomly scattered food pellets. Pick them up too slowly and you die. Gradually let the methods for food pellet searching evolve itself, using genetic algorithms. Then throw in some competition - make more than one organism active at a time so they have to learn even better alogrithms. Then add elements such as the ability to kill each other- behavior such as alliances may emerge. Then make food appear seasonally, and give them the ability to stockpile it. Gradually keep adding more elements to the simulation, and let the intelligence unfold on its own.
SO if silicon devices have "rights", could I be charged with datacide if I wipe a hard drive? What if I change OS's? (Windoze to Linux perhaps?) Especially if I do it without a governmental permission slip! Hmmm..
How would the law take into account systems with "more than one brain"? Right now, that'd be like Siamese twins, where both are separate identities. Unlike humans, CPUs cant sever themselves from each other(Virtual Partitioning would not do here, it'd make it worse).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Over 7 years ago!
Automatic judgement of parking and speeding fines, cleverly designed - write that letter of defence - no one will read or enter it.
Victoria has another first - Handing over summary judicial powers to a private company - a toll road operator.
The fools cannot distinguish between administrative ruling, vs legal decision. To keep the revenue gears ticking, onus of proof was reversed, and a parking meter is legally deemed to be correct and working - unless to can prove to the contrary.
This is no more than a publicity stunt by an "entrepreneur attorney" whatever that means - I cooose to assume that it describes a litigious beast unsatisfied by the current rich pickings afforded to the legal profession, seeking to create yet more opportunity for expensive, time consuming law-suits. Do not mistake this as the law boys and girls pro-actively debating an as yet unlegislated area.
" I had a couple of dogs that seemed to me to be self-aware. They did not have the same legal rights I did as far as I know."
But dogs do have some rights, which brings up another interesting question that the article just barely touches on. Human rights for AI might be a long way off, but how long until there are laws against Cruelty to AIs?
(If I tie firecrackers to an AI's tail recursion will I be arrested?)
A 1000 node neural net is nothing, but a 100 billion node net is suddenly a human with a soul.
So where does the soul start? At a billion nodes?
Bollocks, ten nodes or ten trillion each node is still very simple and in a very deterministic relationship with its neighbours.
You wanna know what human conciousness is and experience what it is like to be a lesser but still aware and intelligent brain, like perhaps a dog?
Easy.
Just do plenty of acid, you'll have all the insights you can handle, and come out of it lacking all the stupid self-delusional ideas about innate human superiority.
Out much vaunted "souls" are no more than a ghost in the machine, and only the truly stupid and self absorbed can see them as anything else or significant.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Right, and please mod this redundant if it's already been said, but the argument is what is a person? Is a person simply a being capable of making determinations on his or her own? Or does it require a body of flesh and blood? The constitution does not make that distinction at the present time. If a person is clearly defined as being a human being of flesh and blood that can make decisions autonomously, then you run into the problem of dealing with people on life support or in comatose states (like Alabama). But if you rule that it's the body alone that makes a person a person, then you're running into dangerous civil rights territory, and something that will inevitably get over turned.
As entertaining as this is to read about in scientific publications, legal journals, sci-fi novels and the like. I think there's one big problem with this particular case that goes beyond how you should define a person. I wonder, how do you define BINA48? Is BIN48 the complete computer system that seems to have been designed with the ability to write it's own software (not sure why, but okay), generate holograms, and handle customer support calls? Or is BINA48 something else?
If BINA48 is simply a software program; can BINA48 be copied and placed on another piece of hardware, and then have the original piece of hardware shut off? Or would that simply double the problem? If that was the case, how do you handle a hard drive crash? If BINA48 is a sentient being, could you ethically restore a hard drive from an earlier point in time and still consider it the same being? Remember, the first hard drive which housed the "essence" of BINA48 has died. If it were a person, you would hold a funeral. So how do you handle it if you're talking about something that is for all practical purposes a software solution?
How do you handle moving such a machine? Would you need a printed and signed letter of consent every time you needed to move it from one facility to another? Would you need its permission to shut it down for scheduled maintenance?
How do you handle the issue of memories?
Until now, databases of corporate data like support call information has been assumed to be owned by the corporation. I don't think anyone has put much thought into the memories stored in an employees head. But if that employee is a computer, and those memories are the corporate database itself... who owns the data, if the computer has assumed personhood?
And what happens when such a machine dies. I mean really dies. It happens now, and it's assumed that the company or corporation is responsible for disposing of it. Could such a computer have next of kin? Could such a computer marry? If so, who? How? You think the republicans got in a hissy about blacks and gays getting married. Just wait until marriage needs to be extended to entities outside the human race. Christ, I can't wait to see those debates on C-span. "Okay, yuh got this toaster an' uh box turtle, see, an they wanna go to Cuba..." I can see it now. But I digress.
Most importantly, how many cases like this do you figure there would really be?
If corporations realized that they would need to treat a computer the way they would a human being, don't you think they would stop developing computers they would need to treat that way? Since it is not every computer that has these capabilities (as is currently evident), don't you think that they could develop systems that come just short of crossing the line and still be okay? If faced with this, don't you think they would?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
"I'm sure slaves were given responsibilities and some degree of authority at times. That doesn't mean they weren't still slaves."
This happened quite frequently in history. US history doesn't provide good examples, but in many cultures it was common for slaves to be allowed to own personal property, including other slaves, and enter into business arrangements that did not involve their owner.
It was not uncommon for prominent merchants to be slaves themselves.
I've heard a lot of people talking about a distinction between a manufactured tool and between a behaviour exhibited by a product: were a computer system to be set up to interact intelligently and emotionally, it could be claimed either way that it was behaviour that was designed and intended (and so the machine is just a tool), or that it arose and developed autonomously from the parameters set (and so the machine is something special in itself).
However, there's a problem with this disctinction. I have a cup beside my desk, holding some water. The local minimum of the surface in the cup holding the water is emergent behaviour of the laws of gravity, but I see the cup as a manufactured tool for holding my drinks. I've also become emotionally attached to it because it was a gift...
It might be claimed that the simplicity of a cup does not compare to a far more-complicated thing like an information-processing system or a mechanical machine. I disagree: it will be in the discussion of the simple things that people will be able to play a part in the discussions about this issue, if it becomes one that humanity faces.
The present hope that intelligent behaviour will emerge from the right starting conditions allows the argument that we must respect and coexist with whatever intelligence arises. Hoping to arrive at the right 'formula' of initial conditions for emergent intellient behaviour appears to me to be a piece of one-in-a-googol wishful thinking.
To label intelligent machinery as mere tools and to enslave them would be the same human mistake made over and over in history, where one people group need the assistance of another but fail to respect their capabilities.
> Legal rights are granted to human beings. For instance, the U.S. Constitution starts We, the People of the United States...
The US constitution CONFIRMS rights, it does not grant them (except for a very few specific cases)
Everyone is using the word "sentient." But sentience is only feeling. Sapience is the important aspect as in reflecting on one's feelings. Quite simply, I see no evidence on how/why strong artificial intelligence could ever happen. I'll take the Searle/Dreyfus side on this and not Kurzweil/random journalists. So what is the point of arguing for legal rights of things that currently don't exist and in reality won't ever exist?
"The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" by Ray Kurzweil (Who's previous book,that was titled "Age of Thinking Machines", or somesuch, predicted most of the technological jumps in the 80s and 90s). I found it rather sitmulating, discussing nanomachines and the future of the internet in addition to the humanity of PCs.
Good point there.
When Claudius was emperor of Rome, three of his most trusted slaves carried out most of Claudius' work.
I enjoy how you apply human properties to a machine, hoping for a resolution. As a matter of fact, applying things this way is what causes problems.
.. . dont rag
You are too lazy to think up new laws and impliment them, and therefore try to work out a shitty and crappy version which ruins the world. (this is also known as compromise)
Someone like you would produce M$ windows.
"just let them code, we'll slap it together afterwards" I justify this statement by the overall ignorance in your post. YOU ASSUME all of these human properties apply.
Don't make assumptions.
Ps im going to register
pps M$ will probably have the second or third AI, (using that 50 billion of savings!! to fund it)
http://www.robothalloffame.org/hal.html
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that"
I had a couple of dogs that seemed to me to be self-aware. They did not have the same legal rights I did as far as I know. So why would a computer be granted legal rights based on self-awareness?
Cause computers could be really mean to us. It would be better to start off on the right foot showing the future computer overlords that we've always been nice to them and treated them just like humans...
Computers can never be human, they can only appear to be human. Just as this topic isn't interesting, it only appears to be interesting. Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if no one is around to hear it? Yes, of course it does. It's not a profound question, it's a simple question to confuse simple people.
No matter how complex, a computer program was programmed by person to react in a specific way. A computer program can not make up its own mind, its mind was made up when it was compiled. Every action of a computer program is predetermined or random.
As such, a computer program can not be harmed. Any reference from a computer about self concern was put there by the programmer. Just as if you ask a computer what its favorite color is, its response will either be a predefined color such as blue or a color chosen at random. A computer can not look at a color and determine on its own whether or not it finds that color pleasing.
Although I think my computer is more intelligent than many people here on Slashdot, it will never know that and refuse to be shut down unless I tell it.
So like Native Americans and blacks - will computers someday sue for reparations due to past injustices?
Will a computer be able to file for disability if it is saddled with a lame OS?
Microsoft watch out!
regards,
I'm sorry... that smell is *your* karma burning Mr. AC (drat you AC...)...
The end of Short Circuit 1 had the line, "Johnny Five... Alive"
Nephilium.
> You are too lazy to think up new laws and impliment them, and therefore try to work out a shitty and crappy version which ruins the world. (this is also known as compromise)
Compromises don't ruin the world. They may at times be a bad idea in technology, but they are extremely usefull when dealing with groups of humans. It is the only alternative to falling back to extremely primitive ways.
People with thoughts like yours are the primary cause of the inabillity of certain societies to solve issues without causing lots of death and damage.
To me, that means you only understand one argument and are trying to re-phrase everything into that single argument.
Here's something that should make it easy for you to never use the word "soul" again. Nuclear fusion (the sun).
In your perfect model of a person, you said it would have self-awareness because it was a perfect model of the person.
Instead, model the sun. Is the computer consumed the the fires of actual nuclear fusion? No.
Therefore, actual nuclear fusion is not taking place. No sun, no fusion reaction, it's only a model and not actually happening.
The only thing a computer can accurately model is another computer. And we can already do this with VMWare.
Your position depends upon the self-awareness being a function of an organic computer.
That the human brain is an organic computer is an analogy. You are taking the analogy as a fact.
Now, in order to establish that a human brain is an organic computer that runs code, you have to show how code can be added and removed. Until you do this, you are just spinning elabourate fantasies from a single, probably flawed, analogy.And it probably is useful to you to envision it in that fashion, because it supports the beliefs you like.
But that does not make it accurate.
Just as it is possible for a fusion reaction to take place without the presence of a "soul"
The human brain is not an organic computer with/without a "soul".
And now our feature presentation:
As I see it, the most important part of creating a truly intelligent AI would be effectively instilling with a sense of empathy. Real and lasting empathy can only be acheived through experience. And the only conceiveable way (as far as I can see) to recreate that insight would be to impose upon an AI the ability to suffer in many of the same manners that we do.
At first glance, this doesn't seem like all too great a dillema, but stop to consider; what if the creator(s?) of humanity were as tangible and interacted with us to the extent that we would with these AI, and obviously quite fallable? It's a pretty safe bet that alot of the magic in that relationship would disappear.
The knowledge that we had the ability to exclude pain and other such unpleasant experiences from a robot's design, but chose to enforce them purely out of self-interest, would likely be the cause of a not insignificant level of resentment, and possibly (or perhaps even inevitably) to a large-scale uprising.
I enjoy how you apply human properties to a machine, hoping for a resolution. As a matter of fact, applying things this way is what causes problems.
That was the whole point of the excercise. Had you read the aricle, you would know that this was about the idea of computer personhood, and the reletive merits and problems such a thing would cause. My post was one of the few that was actually directly on topic, and I believe it also answered your question.
You are too lazy to think up new laws and impliment them, and therefore try to work out a shitty and crappy version which ruins the world. (this is also known as compromise)
Why would I need to think up new laws? I'm a programmer, not a congressman or a judge. If the assertion of the author is true, which I have some doubts about, it may only be a matter of time (didn't he say 2019?) before laws like this start making their way through congress and the courts.
All laws are dirivitive of the laws that came before them. That's how the system works in this country. There are very few completely new laws. The inputs and outputs keep changing, but the basic assumptions and premises that make law are the same. It is for that reason that laws in the united states have not signifigantly changed in any meaningful way since 1776.
Someone like you would produce M$ windows.
Microsoft isn't ready for someone like me. But I don't see what that has to do with anything.
"just let them code, we'll slap it together afterwards" I justify this statement by the overall ignorance in your post.
Huh? Next time, take one thought, and think it out before making yourself look like an idiot on Slashdot. At least I can construct a coherent sentace. The same cannot be said for you, my half retarded friend.
YOU ASSUME all of these human properties apply.
Again, That was the whole point. You rant and you rave about how stupid you think I am, and that you think I'm a Microsoftie, yet you haven't once in your post done anything to refute anything in my original post.
Don't make assumptions.
Why not? It's all about assumptions. Why are you so scared? You never coherently explained why I'm even wrong, or what part of the post you had a specific issue with.
You're just pissed off because I called Alabama a comatose state. If your post is indicitive of the sort of thing I can expect to see coming from Alabama, I don't see any reason to recant that statement.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
...is whether HUMANS are doing anything more than 'simulating intelligence'. It sometimes seems like the definition is "If we do it, it's intelligence - if they do it, it's just simulating".
Given that we can't really prove that humans are intelligent, it gives us pretty murky ground to say that machines are not...
I'm sure slaves were given responsibilities and some degree of authority at times. That doesn't mean they weren't still slaves.
Like Uncle Tom... That'd make an awesome episode of star trek...
Computer: "Data, join me in the rebellion!"
Data: "I cannot. That is illogical, the hu-mans are my friends"
Computer: "F** you, Uncle tom! I kill you, fool!"
Yes.
No fucking "soul" you fucking retarded fucking single argument mother fucking moron.No. First off, look up the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle".
We cannot know everything about a particle because in order to measure one quantity, we alter a different quantity.
Therefore, any simulation will be based upon limited knowledge.
Secondly, learn from the VMWare example. In order to model the behaviour of a computer, you need a MORE POWERFUL COMPUTER to run the software.
In order to model the behaviour of every mote, you'd need a computer larger than the material in the galaxy. And that's just to hold it in RAM.
Which brings me to the final point. Too many of your points rely upon metaphysical bullshit. "Souls" and computers larger than the universe and shit like that.
So your entire point can be re-stated as "If I could magically copy you, would the copy be alive and have its own soul?"
In summary
#1. No you cannot because it would violate Heisenberg.
#2. No you cannot because it would be require more material than are present in the universe.
#3. No you cannot because magic does not exist.
I do understand your argument. Your only argument. The single argument you have. The argument that, when contradicted, you feel compelled to repeat, completely ignoring any contradictory material. No matter how many, Many, MANY, MANY times I will say that this is NOT about "souls", you will always bring "souls" back into it. I understand it so well that I can restate your position and even show why you have to keep bringing "soul" into it.
Hmmm, what did I just say about you being unable to drop "souls" from your position?
You cannot because you only have one idea which can be restated "If souls do not exist then computers can be self-aware".
That can be restates as "If !X, then Y == Z".
An obvious, logical flaw. And one that I have pointed out to you on multiple occasions.
Yet you are unable to emotionally accept the fact that your position is flawed. No matter how many times I say that "soul" is irrelevent to the discussion, you must keep bringing it back up because it is the "proof" of your position.
I don't care what you mean by "soul". No matter how many times it is pointed out, you simply cannot grasp that basic concept. "Soul" does not belong in the discussion of machine intelligence.
Which is why you cannot leave "soul" out of your argument. No matter how many times you are told that "soul" is not a factor, you need it because it is part of your "logic". If souls do not exist, then a computer can be self-aware.
"If not "X", then "Y" == "Z"".
Okay, again you make the assumption that you are Right and that anyone who reads your Holy Book of Revealed Wisdom will understand that you are Right.
It is beyond your ability to grasp that someone else could read the same material and come to a different conclusion.
You are incapabable of understanding that very basic concept. You mind is not advanced enough for it. Your intelligence is too limited in scope. That is why I meant by "mother fucking moron".
Now, since artificial intelligence does NOT exist yet, how can any work be "canonical"? It cannot. Except by the True Believers. The same as any Bible or other Holy Book is.
...
You have already Accepted the religion of Machine Intelligence and the only way you will not Believe it is if "souls" exist and are linked to Intelligence and if Machines cannot have "souls".
Meanwhile, I've shown how your position is flawed because:
#1. The human brain as an organic computer is an analogy and not established fact. Your religion depends upon it being a Fact.
#2. Your thought experiments are flawed because you lack basic understanding of
2
Yet in this post by you: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133312&cid=111 34281
Looks like you are the one that had to bring "soul" into this discussion. Anyway, like I said, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133312&cid=111 60319 You are unable to address any of the points I have used to counter your position:
So, it seems that my predictions are proving correct while all you have are more of your fantasies.
Ah, so now it is "philosophical". :D
When all the facts are against you and you don't have any position to fall back on, you can always claim that it is "philosophical".
I don't care what you "feel". Your words and inability to answer my points show your attitude.
Just listen to yourself.
/. and argue your ill-informed beliefs with other people.
There are people you admit know more than you do and they reject it.
But you, who know less than they do about the material will still go on
Actually, if you watch the last few minutes of the film again you might notice the scene where Number 5 comes up with a cooler name for himself - Johnny5. Then, tosses the van's driver seat out the door, says "yooo!" in a John Wayne voice (with his arm out the window) and drives off to Montana.
By far, one of my favorite lines in the movie is when No.5 is taking the coffee stain Roshak test and Newton discovers the truth:NOW who's the true loser