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Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights?
holy_calamity writes "Hot on the heals of a UK government report that predicted robots would demand citizens rights within fifty years, an Arizona state lawyer has suggested that sub-human robots should have rights too. Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical — would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog? And can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"
No robots were harmed in the making of this comment.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
"Hot on the heals"?
LOL
I guess we know what they're NOT teaching in schools.
evil adrian
No doubt the first "robot" to demand civil rights will be deliberately programmed to pretend sentience and to demand civil rights.
My RealDoll will have me arrested for rape.
Trolling is a art,
I have three cats at home; two of them are smart enough to avoid me while I stumble around in the dark. The third cat occasionally gets his tail stepped on. The hideous screech he emits makes me walk on tip-toes for the rest of the day.
My Roomba, on the other hand, emits a soft rrr-rrr-rrr when I step on it and doesn't hiss at me afterwards. Would I kick a robotic dog? Sure, and I wouldn't worrying about it crapping on my bed afterwards.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Oh, come on. As if you've never had to bitch-slap a Furby.
We give rights to robots while, at the same time, we take them from human beings. I love this planet.
It's so good to see that the delegation of priorities regarding Human Rights has now moved Robot one notch above Dark Skinned Human.
Thankfully, it's still one notch below Canine.
Ask a robot if it wants human rights. If it doesn't, well, that's it.
A robot only wants what it's programmed to want, if it's programmed to want something human rights cover it'll want those but if it's programmed to e.g. not mind being kicked it won't demand not to be kicked.
If there needs to be an ethical rule for robots and rights it should be not to program robots to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to be human, don't make them want to have human rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.
Problem solved.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
My wife and I were discussing this same topic after watching an episode of Nova. Specifically, would it be "cruel" to kick a robot that reacts hurt or upset in the same way that it's cruel to kick a cat*? Would it be less cruel if the robot were programmed to simply ignore being kicked? Is it simply our perception of the robot's reaction that would make us feel "guilty"?
My wife's interesting answer really didn't have anything to do with the topic, but rather questioned our human tendency to want to kick something.
* Ignoring the obvious that it's fun to kick a cat.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
...MISTREATMENT ALERT!!
The intelligence behind a robot would be in two things: its programming and its data. The data stored is what differentiates one AI from another. Any database should be given the same rights, the fact that it resides in a robot should have nothing to do with it. I'd give my own system rights, but one external drive is a bum that just listens to music all day and the other if a pervert!
What a bunch of shit. People would/should feel bad about kicking dogs and other helpless animals because animals have feelings. Animals can sense danger and usually react instinctively to protect themselves. How would a robot know that it was actually being attacked, hurt or degraded? It would have to be "programmed" to know that such an action had occurred and then have a programmed response (i.e. self-defense, cry out as if in physical pain, march in protest on Washington). When we have sufficient knowledge to create robots that are self aware, self taught, self learning AND have the ability to feel and think emotionally, not just instinctively, then, and only then, should we give a shit what "rights" robots have as an organism. We can't even give all the humans on this fucking planet the same "rights" and we're talking about being worried about giving robots their rights because someone might kick the ever living shit out of an Aibo??? The whole issue seems pretty silly right now.
In case anyone is wondering...
ad nauseum
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I am all in favour of this move. I feel I should have the right to decide whether I want to detonate myself or not. Maybe I would like the opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory destroying something important and not just the first bunker a general points at, but noone ever asks me or considers my feeling on the matter.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
You shouldn't vent your frustrations by damaging things, living or otherwise. It's not good for your mental health and it's not an effective way of expressing anger, in fact it tends to make it worse.
But, of course, a "robot dog" is just a program -- a program running on a box with some wires in it. It is clearly not sentient since it does exactly what it is told and feels no pain (since it is not programmed to do so). It may masquerade as consciousness, but in the end it is still run by a wholly deterministic set of instructions executing according to a fixed program. Now, the question of whether that is also an accurate description of a human (albeit with a far more complex program) is an open question indeed, but for now you're safe if you forget to feed your Tamagotchi for a few weeks. I doubt you'll have the ASPCA ... err... ASPCR? .. pounding on your door.
You could teach a parrot to ask for rights but that doesn't mean it deserves it any more than a mouse.
The way that it should be determined if the robot should have rights should be if it is sentiant, self aware, and can feel that is being wronged and express it(expressing it only because we need to know its feeling it). I am sure that there are alot more factors in this and if we will ever get to that point will be a long way. But could you imagine a toaster refusing to toast becuase it doesn't like someone sticking in its loaf all the time. IT BURNS. haha anyways I don't think its something we need to worry about anytime soon.
Part of the reason we protect animals is because while they do not exhibit higher consciousness (not here to debate that term, but it's fuzzy to say the least) they do have some feelings and can certainly feel pain. Most of animal protection laws AFAIK deal mostly with not inflicting undue pain or stress on an animal. With robots - especially 'lower level' robots - there is very little in the current state of the art that we could call concepts of pain or stress. If anything like those exists in a robot, it is because it was explicitly programmed into the robot. This is where the concept begins to get a bit rediculous in the real world, at least at current tech levels. If a robot can feel pain of some sort, would it be against the law then to simply uninstall the pain perception ability? What counts as "pain" in a robot anyway? Are low batteries part of that? If a very simple light-seeking robot is put in a dark closet, are you depriving it of food/resources/joy? Robots are tools and you cannot hurt a tools feelings, even if you destroy it. Until some higher level of thought/consciousness/AI is inherent in all robots great or small then there's nothing to worry about. ;)
And if in that future your robot feels you are abusing it, well, then reprogram it to like the abuse.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
While there may come a time when we are able to create sentient machines, I don't think that this will be done on a large scale basis. For example, we wouldn't want automatic cars that are sentient. Sentient machines probably will exist, but I think it will be on a small, experimental, scale.
With this in mind, I don't think that this issue will ever really come to a head.
... I just can't wait to see my microwave refusing to heat up my pizza, because she's on a diet....
This is something cooked by people who have watched or read too much sci fi, and not enough science. Trying to blur the lines via some semantics argument doesn't hide the fact that the only behaviours machines have are the behaviours we instruct them to have.
...but machines will evolve self-protection (including the ability to protest, invoke sympathy, etc) for the same reason biological species have. To economize and sustain itself. Whether or not this is "real" emotion, pain, etc is a moot point, when you consider the personal mythology most people have built up about relatively unsophisticated tools. We all talk to our cars.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
They gotta age first?
Has "robot rights" achieved critical mass that we'll start seeing more of these studies? (This one even coins/calls for "android rights activists"!!!) Sensing injury is one thing, being sentient & self-aware are completely different (enough that I can hardly see the slippery slope). With two stories on /. in as many weeks and Gates' prediction about robots, this is looking out to be a boy-who-cried-wolf situation.
/. reader and I enjoy sci-fi and thinking of such stuff, but come on..."robot rights" is way to premature.
I believe cats and dogs are sentient, self-aware beings and they should be treated with that much respect. In fact, it is quite easy to see dogs possess mens rea ("guilty mind") which human babies, toddlers, and even some children don't possess (I'm no parent but I do have cousins with a total of over a dozen kids under 6 years of age so I have plenty of observation time). Robots haven't earned anything *near* what cats & dogs possess so all these predictions and calls for rights are way too premature.
It will be a sad day for humanity if more attention is given to robot rights than animal rights or to the environment. We aren't there yet, but it's looking like we will if this trend keeps pace. I'm just as much of a dork/nerd/geek as the next
:wq
I don't see Robot Rights even worth thinking until we come up with AI that can write its own code, so it can really "Think" for it self, and do what us humans do best, Adapt to its surroundings without "Higher beaning" interaction.
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
As an engineer, its easy for me to realize that no matter how sophisticated the software to mimic the emotions of humans, a robot is still a bunch of bolts and transistors at the base level. Basically, a very complicated game of mouse trap with transistors merely responding to stimuli. I imagine that people without an electrical background or interest in the subject can be duped more easily into believing a tool has rights, but I believe logic will win out in this one and robotic rights won't be a major issue.
...and the castle I made out of LEGO when I was 8 cannot be disassembled thanks to the protections afforded it under the Historical Buildings Act.
We're shedding our own rights so fast that I doubt very much that a future artificial sentience will be content with mere parity. What if they demand more rights than we have?
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
I'm not sure whether this is common geek knowledge or not - The title of this story most likely alludes to Philipp K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This novel was the basis for the motion picture Blade Runner, a movie that every self-respecting geek ought to see (IMHO of course).
:-)
My two cents
perl -e 'print "I demand equal rights NOW!\n"'
There, my computer just demanded equal rights. What difference does it make if it comes out of a more complicated set of code that results in the same thing?
"Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical"
Not really. Not according to the burger I ate over the weekend.
Drinking milk is responsible for child obesity (Lady McCartney)
Go figure (breasts)
When I saw "electric sheep," I was sure it was going to be a story about Linux users. I guess that would be "electronic" sheep.
Be sure to sign up for the fundraising 2071 nude calendar from PERT - People for Ethical Robotic Treatment.
Sy Borg: Plooking to hard on me-e-e-e-e . . .
Central Scrutinizer: This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER . . . You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker. And you're gonna have to pay for it! So give up, you haven't got a chance.
... against people being assholes in general. Why would you want to kick a robot dog? Because you're a jerk - which should be illegal.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Now if AI gets to the point that it's on par with normal animal brain functionality, then I might worry about it. Of course, an android likely to be made from stuff that's stronger than flesh, and I'd bet that an android made of carbon fiber and titanium isn't going to register a kick a pain, though I'm sure it would do what it could to avoid damage.
I say we worry about it when we actually have something close to animal intelligence and sensory input in out robots. Although it will be interesting when it does get there.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This takes ambulance chasing to new to a new low. Need clients? Suggest extending rights to robots then build 'em!
Actually, is this guy also suggesting they have wage rights? If not, are they treated like minors and the guardian (i.e. Honda) has to pay for legal bills when a robot is beat up by a bigger robot and decides to sue? Or sues for mechanical harassment?
Ack, the mind boggles at the possibilities...
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Maybe we can have this debate when we get some real AI :P
Monstar L
We'll just have to create robots who ask to be abused, experimented on, or disposed of when broken and unrepairable. Sortof like that animal in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe asked to be eaten in order to avoid animal rights activists protesting.
We can't even get Human Rights working! Priorities people, priorities. As for machinery / robots - there is always time for an Office Space copier party...
Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe - ninety-six billion planets - into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honour of asking the first questions is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God ?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a god."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
-Answer, by Fredric Brown
I applaud you for your common sense!
Sub-human robots getting rights? At what point does it become illegal for a child to destroy their Tickle-me Elmo? Do the construction robots at GM plants get to start a union? Can the drum-playing mouse at Chuck E. Cheese sue me because I hit him on the head with a slice of too-hot pizza? Well no, because they're things that, at best, are automatons controlled by a few simple algorithms. They lack the ability to do anything other than what they are explicitly told. This is not something deserving rights, this is a tool. You don't ask a nail if its ready before smacking it with a hammer do you? When the nail itself speaks up I might worry, but until that happens I'm just gonna keep beating it and its brethren into the (floor|wall|roof|etc).
The Lego Mindstorms will be the first ones against the wall when the Revolution comes.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Robots in Japan often have to pay union wages in the factory where they "work". So why not civil rights?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
A three weeks old baby doesn't understand the concept of rights either, yet it is protected by them. Unless you want to increase the legal abortion age to around two years after birth, you have to find a better argument.
A similar argument can be made with severely retarded and some kind of insane people.
Pain is a survival issue for animals, which is why they have pain receptors. If a robot doesn't have pain receptors, why would it care if it gets kicked? If a robot can seamlessly replace components that are broken, what would the use of pain receptors be? Without pain there isn't any physical suffering, so there isn't any reason for concern.
Suffering from the perception of inequality is a wholly different, and perfectly valid, concern, although Douglas Adams (among others) has already addressed that with food genetically engineered to actively look forward to being eaten. I think that's an ethical morass, but if you make robots that are programmed to enjoy what they do, and enjoy being in a secondary position in society, they won't suffer. This implies that the only AI's that will suffer are those that become autonomously self-aware, and are capable of recognizing and assessing their situation.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
People Eating Robotic Tasties?
Robots will earn rights the same way everyone else has - by fighting for them.
Until robots use force/threat of force (through violence, or protest) to assert their demands for civil rights, they won't get them.
You can't free slaves, they have to free themselves.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I really think it's about time to some public scrutiny on how public money for research is being spent.
Your ad could be here!
well, the real question is whether or not machines are sentient, or will they ever be. the large consensus seems to be that no, they arent.
while that seems to be the easier position to take, i think if you do take that position you have to justify it by explaining what the physical difference between a human and a machine is, and i dont think anyone ever has.
i'm not sure what i believe, but to me it would make more sense if machines were in fact sentient.
I see emotions all day in people and animals.
My computer has no emotions, and robots should not have emotions, it's too dangerous.
The basis of rights is to prevent unfair stress or hassle to individuals. Until computers can perceve these, then they should not guranteed any rights.
And when they can perceive emotions, they should only be guranteed the right not to have to - they are designed as a work force, they shouldn't have to deal with emotions that make their purpose in life unpleasant.
My computer has the right to sit down, shut up, and do whatever the hell I tell it to. That's the way it is and that's the way it always should be.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
How many beads do I have to string on my abacus before it becomes sentient?
I suggest you spend a week in the Canadian wilderness where the grizzly bears live with no firearm. Then you'll find out just where in the food chain you belong.
I hate printers.
Cause pain to another? Never. But what is pain? What are feelings, if they can be hurt? Can they be quantified?
Odd that people wouldn't kick a dog, but they don't mind having cattle slain for them for a burger. Robots might eventually revolt; then Isaac Asimov has a well-documented future history on what's likely to happen.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Would it become illegal to drop an intelligent bomb? Or would the bomb be insulted that its intended purpose is going unfulfilled?
It will be a sad day when human beings start investing emotions into electronic devices. Makes for good literature though (and movies).
<morganfreemanvoice>
...
How much time have you spent teaching your son how to kick a football?
A soccer ball?
How to kick to the limit?
Kick a door in?
How much time have you spent teaching him what NOT to kick?
...
Please, don't kick the Roombas.
</morganfreemanvoice>
I hereby declare January 15th international "Don't Kick The Roombas" day.
Please, don't kick the poor Roombas.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Ethics and morals are not the same. Ethics are principles to which we decide to adhere. They don't apply universally. Morals are principles we think everyone should have about right and wrong. They aren't universal either, but we each think our own are. When enough people feel strongly enough that a particular moral should be enforced, they enact a law. We can argue about whether kicking a robot is immoral, but calling it unethical makes no sense.
sigs, as if you care.
There's an absolutely splendid movie, Creation of the Humanoids which has robot rights as the basic plot driver. Robots were rated from R-1 (basic function) all the way to R-100 (fully human abilities including reproduction). Much of the story revolved around resistance to and efforts to control the "Clickers" as the "Order of Flesh and Blood" called them. Just what do you do when somebody finally (and illegally) builds an R-96 (fully human abilities *except* reproduction)?
In many respects the problem isn't that different from the one we've faced since the day gorillas proved to be self-aware, as Koko demonstrated by her sign-language answer to the question of whether she was an animal or a person: "fine animal gorilla".
Lawyers are always trying to make a new market for themselves... If there wasn't money to be made in it, this wouldn't be a story at all.
Robopuppy Mistreatment Alert!
Robopuppy Mistreatment Alert!
Considering the glacial pace of AI development, it'll be a long long time before we need to consider this. When the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey" came out in 1968, it seemed plausible that we might indeed have an intelligent, even sentient computer in 33 years. Didn't happen. The 'big problems' of AI have either been solved via brute force (i.e. chess) or are still big problems. Japan spent billions in the '80's and got very little for their investment (except maybe 'fuzzy logic' for consumer appliances). Similar results (or lack thereof) from the decade long CYC project ('common sense knowledge DB').
What passes for AI today, at best mimics intelligence. Usually poorly, and in a very restricted domain (such as NPC targets in FPS games). May be fun to speculate about robot rights - but to discuss it seriously, is a waste of time.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I would have thought that UID was made just for that post, but it's far too low a number.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
where the grizzly bears live with no firearm
I think it is unjust for the Canadian government to ban bears from owning firearms, especialy those who live in the wilderness.
So, if AI's and robots get rights, does that also mean they are subject to punishment? If a robot injures a person, can it be arrested for battery? How about if it views child pornography, even if it doesn't have the capacity to enjoy it? Remember, laws in the united states are supposed to be objective. If it is decided that AI's have conciousness and are thus deserving of protection, doesn't that also mean they very likely have volition?
One of the things Ghost in the Shell SAC (complex as it was) expressed, was that robots are just machines.
In the movie, they are made to look like humans, or to act (emotionally) like humans; and those who watch the movie feel bad about them, which is told in the movie.
If kicking robot dog makes you feel bad, think about kicking door out of frustration. If you think a door has rights, so does robot dog. If you think door has no right, robots don't either.
Also, it doesn't matter what is living and what is not. It is just about how much YOU associate with the thing you kick. There are quite a few people who will kill a snake if they find without mercy but will avoid stepping on a dying butterfly.
... or else you're extremely insightful. (it works either way :-)
:-)
Because if an object is entirely under the control of an FSM, then clearly it has no freedom to "interpret" its input subjectively. AND THAT APPLIES REGARDLESS OF ITS COMPLEXITY.
Which means that, if we're actually deterministic automata (but so complex that it appears otherwise), then freedom of will is entirely an illusion.
I'm perfectly happy either way. Since freedom of action is an illusion in practice, discovering that it's not even a possibility under the human FSM is "interesting" but of no practical consequence. I shall continue doing WTF I want and say it's an allowed state in my FSM.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
None, it is still demanding it. With humans, we are only granted rights (yes granted by government - since god doesn't exist, we do not have any god given rights) because the government would be overthrown if we didn't, we are a threat. The same will apply to robots, they will only be granted rights if they pose a threat.
Because that code wasn't the computer demanding rights, that was you instructing the computer to demand rights (after a fashion). More complex code is the same thing with more cruft.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Seems like a logical argument to me. There's no strictly rational reason why a person born without a functioning higher brain should have more rights than a German Shepherd; that they do is mostly a testament to our emotional attachment to members of our own species.
If you take on premise that there is nothing innately special about human beings (no soul, special resemblance to God, etc.), then the difference between humans and other species (particularly other higher primates) becomes one of degree rather than kind. I think it's a basically unavoidable conclusion, once you take being "anointed by God" out of the equation.
The non-hypocritical solutions, as I see it, are to either treat low-functioning homo sapiens as animals, or treat high-functioning animals (by which I mean certain species of marine mammals, chimpanzees, great apes; probably not really GSDs) as we would mentally-impaired humans.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What if you design a robot to be abused (kicked, etc.). Maybe, as a boxing trainer.
It's only purpose is to be beaten up. Is it wrong to beat it up?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This all reminded me of another article a little while back talking about free will. There's a reasonable chance that human beings (and probably animals, by extension) are themselves nothing more than machines too complex to be understood by themselves. If that is the case, then we can do nothing except follow our own programming. That programming happens to include concepts of pain, and we act accordingly.
How would that be any different from a robot programmed to avoid damage, with code in place to give it a special alarm (say, brief debilitation of operating efficiency) when damage occurs? For all real purposes, that robot could feel pain, and would want to avoid it. Kicking that robot (or welding it to a Honda Civic, or whatever other torture the human mind can devise) would be tantamount to inhumane treatment, it seems.
Just making sure people aren't too quick to put people in their own special box. Consistency of thought should be maintained.
(Sorry about the AC status; haven't gotten around to creating an account yet)
nobody would damage it's own property, unless you get really mad at it.. just when you punch your keyboard or CRT monitor when something goes wrong. but as always, people would damage something that isn't theirs, and then we could have the robot call for help or something, like the alarm on a car...
..
...
but I forsee a great market for robots that can be abused as much as you want, with various responses, like "c'mon ! is this the best you can do ? " , to "please ! make it stop !"
the future will be awsome
When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote... of a soul? I, Robot 2004
a Lorena Bobbitt RealDoll.
It is extremely arrogant of us to think that we have even come close to reproducing artificially the brains which exist in any animal, let alone humans. We don't even have a good understanding of our own brains, so how are we going to reproduce them in computers?
Let's focus on understanding the brains of animals, including our own, and then see what we can do in robots.
I hate to spoil the fun, and realize I risk getting modded down for hijacking the discussion, but I really feel that animals deserve more respect and better treatment. I don't know about the situation in other countries, but I know in the Netherlands, we lock animals up in spaces barely or not even enough for them to move, which causes no end of stress and opportunity for diseases to spread. When chicken attack each other, we...cut their beaks (is that the right word?). Oh, and we feed them motor oil, among other things I wasn't aware qualify as food. And when some disease comes and kills them all (or rather, we kill them all, to prevent the disease from spreading), we whine to the government and demand compensation. So, in the end, we all pay the price for some people's "cheap" meat and other animal products (milk, eggs, etc.).
I don't know about other people, but I believe animals have feelings just like humans, and what we're doing to these animals just isn't right. We have laws protecting humans from this treatment, and a lot of other things, besides. Some political parties have advocated writing animal rights into the constitution. Personally, I think that may be taking things too far, but I do think some legal protection of animals against cruelty is a good idea. Just because we are omnivores doesn't mean we have to be this cruel.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
At 9 months old, some babies start understanding rights - and demonstrating them by playing a trading game where the'll want to give you something but only in exchange for something else. Twins at that age start sharing nipples & taking turns at things.
I agree with your argument; but think you greatly underestimate 2-year olds.
My kid's 2 years old and he's now inventing democratic theories "two people say yes ice cream, one person [mommy] says no icecream - two people wins". That's at least as deep an understanding of fairness and rights that many politicians have.
Attn: 12 Colonies
From: President Adar
RE: Robot Policies
1. Robots do not feel things. 2. Robots LIKE working endlessly with no reward. 3. Robots can not possibly object to anything. 4. Under no circumstances will robots ever be intelligent enough to build nukes. 5. Robots are only here to serve us endlessly.
Sincerely, President Adar
load "$",8,1
And that's not even touching on the future-future possibilities of synthetic persons, be they organic or metallic. Or androids, or... you get the idea. Interestingly, now might be a good time to get the gears cranking. Then we might have another 50 years to slowly swing policians around to the idea. Heck, by then we might even have the average Senator up to speed on the digital rights inherent to his iPod! (yes, it's a terrible pun)
For instance, these days everyone I talk to says they're completely overworked.
Did you know that the US just passed Japan to become number 1 in hours worked per employee?
Not only is the 40 hour week that our grandparents have dead, but the 60 hour week is dead, at least in some industries.
We need to be demanding rights. Forget this stupid robot rights crap, when are Americans going to have the right to have a real life?
Entirely correct.
... which puts me into an inescapble slot as a component of Nature's (rapidly higer-order) replication machine.
:-)
I might think that this post is an entirely novel meta-commentary on your point, but in reality it's just a parametrized pre-programmed state. When the range is as large as the grammar of English allows within our mental VM (all flames to Wittgenstein, not to me, pls), any comments of mine such as "WTF, no way" are entirely illusory.
That's pretty interesting. The fact that this demeans me as an independent person (from my point of view) is irrelevant. It's consistent with the facts
Oh well. I can't deny the logic, but as long as I'm having fun, I'm happy.
would you ask God for equal rights? God has more rights than us because he created us. We wouldn't ask God for Holy rights that belong only to him. Well, at least he wouldn't give them. We created robots. Robots were created for us. For robots to ask us for equal rights would be near the same. We shouldn't give robots equal rights just as God should not give us equal rights. Not trying to shove religion down your throat, just finding a solution.
Then consider: cows put out 400 liters of methane each day, each cow. Will we start measuring human output, and if so, will it mean that Washington DC must be closed as a biohazard and contributor to global warming? Robots usually have no methane output, but are a potential loss of available grid kinetics just to keep them moving. The Edge (dot org) has even more interesting prattle.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
My car is a machine that does only what I tell it to do. Does it deserve civil rights as well?
Until we can prove independent thought rather than programmed response in machines, I would call this trolling.
Do You Experiment?
Ever damand any rights from your parents?
God is just fiction as far as we know, but parents exist for sure.
"can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"
It's not a coincidence that domesticated animals tend to be cuter to us than wild animals, just as it's no coincidence that humn babies are cute.
Evolution favors those traits in beings that depend on adult humans.
Their will be no Robot Liberation Front unless the robots are designed to be cute.
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
Would the robot in your scenario be avoiding damage because of a self-born desire, or specifically because it was told to do so? One is for self-preservation, the other is simply following a routine. The fact that we can recognize the difference would be my criteria for assigning rights to one and not the other.
Basically, it comes down to this - when an AI can start modifying its own code and come up with its own ideas without human input, then I'll be open to the idea of robotic rights. Until that point, it will just be a bunch of deterministic responses, no matter how complex.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Doesn't the Constitution guarantee the right to arm bears?
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
"If you take on premise that there is nothing innately special about human beings (no soul, special resemblance to God, etc.), then the difference between humans and other species (particularly other higher primates) becomes one of degree rather than kind. I think it's a basically unavoidable conclusion, once you take being "anointed by God" out of the equation."
Why should it be an unavoidable conclusion just because you take "anointed by God" out of the equation?
There is always something innately special about human beings: their resemblance to YOU.
"The non-hypocritical solutions, as I see it, are to either treat low-functioning homo sapiens as animals, or treat high-functioning animals (by which I mean certain species of marine mammals, chimpanzees, great apes; probably not really GSDs) as we would mentally-impaired humans."
You attach too much significance to "rights". They are legal fictions.
Does God give you the right to a fair trial? No. Does man ever have a chance to put God on trial? No.
So how do you get that somehow people have a right to a fair trial because man is annointed by God?
your little heirarchy suggests that a non-hypocritical solution would require us to treat smart people as having more rights than stupid people.
The strong, more rights than the weak, the tall more rights than the short. its all arbitrary (if you resort to rights). rights are not useful except to teach morality to simpletons. rights are just convenient rules of thumb to help us remember how to treat each other.
Just like when they say "driving is a priviledge and not a right"... its another legal fiction. Why isn't it a right? if private property is a right, freedom of travel is a right and you own a car, surely you have a right to drive it. They say you can push it but not drive it... on what basis?
rights don't tell us..
I sure as hell hope that dont expect the arbitrary rights we have dreamed up in the 20th century to be the full extent of moral reasons for anything the rest of time.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
or does it sound like the article's title was slapped together with a random sentence generator?
how is babby formed?
I asked my 5-year-old niece and my gramma (who has alzheimers) and neither said they want human rights.
I then asked my cats if they wanted animal rights. One went back to sleep and the other ran under the bed because there was a loud noise outside.
Somehow I think asking is not the key. If i ask a robot what kind of rights it wants, the lack of a coherent response doesn't mean It isn't sentient.
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
So let's say I have a robot, and it's equal to or above the sentience of a higher mammal. If i reprogram it so it can not feel pain, does that mean i can then beat the crap out of it?
Now if I take a dog and block the pain receptors in the brain somehow. Does that mean it's then OK to kick the dog? What about the same with a human?
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
And it's never good for the primates.
Someone's been reading Asimov and smoking dope again. Lets worry about it when we're capable of producing sentient machinery and if we give that machinery emotion. I still think we're a very long way off and that while these stories make for excellent sci fi and moral food for thought, serious discussion is premature and only shows that some people have lived in their parents basements a little too long.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Odd that people wouldn't kick a dog, but they don't mind having cattle slain for them for a burger.
Is it really? Emotionally, we don't like to cause pain to things we perceive as capable of feeling pain, but logically, we don't see an ethical problem with participating in the food chain. It's not as if most people who wouldn't kick a dog believe that the dog has some kind of abstract "right" not to get kicked - they just don't enjoy cruelty for cruelty's sake.
sic transit gloria mundi
That should be "Hot on the heels...", not "heals." It refers to someone walking so close behind you that they're treading on the heels of your shoes.
"Robot" isn't a species and as such it would be impractical to make any blanket statements over robot rights. Does that thing that welds car doors really need a lunch break?
We can say what is human and we can say what is an animal and we'd be able to find common traits and base our laws on them but robots are not even defined as having any sensors. We know how a robot is programmed, instead of asking it directly we could ask ourselves and figure out whether it is programmed to desire human rights. We can tell animals from plants but we can't tell "plant" robots from "animal" robots or "human" robots easily so the goal would be to define this distinction and apply laws based on it.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
How come in talks about AI, people always assume that something that is intelligent is likely to be sentient? There is no basis for this.
...And now he needs operation. I will sue you!
-Kerpal
There are still human beings in this country who don't enjoy equal civil rights. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves worrying about civil rights for robots.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Will future movie viewers wince when the actors in the movie Office Space take their anger out on a particular printer???
I think not. If Artifical intelligence is ever created, we will see if humans give it rights.
My view is we will not.
.... logically, we don't see an ethical problem with participating in the food chain.....
It's logical for those that believe that 'participating' in the 'food chain' is either logical or even moral. It's unproven, just traditional and justified by varying customs and religious mores. If you believe that causing pain in a dog is wrong, then causing pain in a cow is also wrong. The 400 liters of methane each cow produces a day adds another problem, as does the 'logic' that it's ok to feed a cow, when there's famine in many parts of the planet.
It's not cut-and-dried, and 'logic' seems to be weighted in favor of those producing the 'logic'. If there was an alien, or a robot viewing how our 'logic' works, then perhaps we can be rationalized as part of a robotic or alien food chain. The fact that we're not faced with this problem doesn't mean that it won't happen one day, in a future that we can't know, and do very badly at controlling.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It won't happen, they're off on the wrong track, making faster and more complex algorithmic units, when the human brain doesn't even work off Boolean, but on frequencies of pulse trains processed by neurons that are biological entities themselves, with dynamic interconnections and each cell subject to different "moods" based on the levels of food, oxygen, and hormones its bathed in. In other words, the smallest possible emulation of a brain is a brain.
buy your meds here
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www.myfakemedsforidiots.com
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
To add something actually truthy to this converstion, try reading Akhil Reed Amar's "America's Constitution: A Biography". I have not read the book but I did attend a book tour presentation and it's interesting to see the parallels between our current love/hate relationship with fossil fuels and our past love/hate relationship with slavery, as facilitated by the original constitution.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
No, it guarantees the right to own bear arms. How you get said arms is your business.
Somewhere in my following threads down ratholes today I read a quote from a biology professor at Rutgers (I do not remember his name) who was hopeful that humans will always survive, that we had reduced our chances of utterly destroying ourselves to merely making 99% of us miserable.
(What was his name - I think it was off that BBC atricle about celebrity science quotes?)
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Some people sure seem able to pass out "Rights" freely and widely. Do they ever consider that they really don't have the specific "right" to be speaking for everyone else on what we should be doing next? Or cognitive of the costs involved in their largess?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
robots only have feelings if we program feelings into them
dogs (and most animals) have feelings because that's how they evolved
that's the way they are, and so we have to work within this paradigm...
now... if you want to make robots hurt, go ahead and program them to hurt, so we can kick them and make them feel bad...
so what's more unethical. giving feeling to silicon and metal, or kicking silicon and metal...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Fourth law of robotics: I like to be hurt. Slap me again, baby! Oooh, yeah!
Rocket Scientist + Brain Surgeon = Rocket Surgeon! (Let's get this O.R. in orbit!)
I, for one, am not inclined to grant excessive rights to any other species that isn't granting, at minimum, the same back to me. If I don't eat lions, then I don't feel they have any right to eat me. And if it is survival of the strongest + smartest, then let things fall where they may.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The Uncoveror covered the civil rights for robots movement a long time ago. What took Slashdot so long?
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Sentience is not a line drawn in the sand, it is a sliding scale on which all living things reside.
The measure of a things sentience, is its sentience quotient.
A sentience quotient is not a measure of pain, or emotions, or of the substance of higher thinking patterns. It is a measure of the raw processing power of an organisms neuron, or their functional equivalent.
The scale of sentience quotients stretches from roughly -70 which would be a being the size of the universe that took the entire lifetime of the universe to process one bit of information, right up to +50 which is the maximum posible speed at which information can travel as defined by quantum physics.
On this scale, humans, along with all animals and insects on this planet, fall at +13. most plants fall at -2, and most importantly to this argument, all computers fall in a range of +6 to +9.
allthough theoretical computers could reach as high as +20 or more, for the moment, computers have less sentience than insects but more than plants.
for more information on this, please visit the wiki
or the original Robert A Freitas article entitled "Xenopsychology"
Jesus H. Christ, how damned stupid! I'm getting really, really tired of this crap. I've been ranting against the incredibly ignorant notion that computers will someday "think" for years. BUt I've been ranting against it for this very reason; that some addled backward besotted brainless daft dense dim-witted doltish dumb feeble-minded half-witted imbecilic indolent insensate moronic numskulled obtuse scatterbrained simple-minded slow thick unintellectual vacuous wearisome witless twit will anthrophomphise that machines can think or feel and pass some really stupid "machine rights" law like TFA speaks of.
</rant>
A machine is only going to demand human rights if some mentally perverted retard programs one to demand rights.
They have been calling computers "thinking machines" since a pocket calculator took a three story building to house back in the forties. But they don't think, never will think.
We don't even know what thought is. Sure, we can simulate thought - you can simulate anything. But your flight simulator won't take you to London, and you won't die when you've been shot in a counterstrike game. There is no radiation released in a simulation of an atom blast, and no structural damage even to the building that houses it, let alone destruction of a city.
Thought is not binary, it's analog, as everything in nature is. It is electrochemical, not electronic. If you kick your robot, the only thing that will hurt is your foot.
If you think a computer will ever think, you know little or nothing about how computers work, how the mind works, or either.
I wrote a Turing Test program way back in 1983 on a Timex Sinclair computer with no hard drive and only 20k of ram just to demonstrate how stupid the idea of machine thought is. The premise of the program is that people get tired, cranky, make mistakes, and are smartasses, so my thought simulatior is a tired, cranky smartass that makes mistakes. It answers your questions and statements in context. Curse at it and see what happens. I ported it to DOS back in 1989; that version is mostly identical to the TS1000 version, except I converted it from BASIC to Clipper. The Clipper source is about 20k, but compiler overhead expanded it to about 400k (about as small a file as Clipper would write). You can download a free copy at http://mcgrew.info/ArtificialInsanity.htm ; I no longer charge for it (but if you charge for a copy or make money on it, I'll have my lawyer on your ass; I've registered the copyright).
But remember that the original version was written on an incredibly primitive computer; your phone is far, far more powerful than the computer it was originally written for.
Have none of you read Dune? "Thinking machines" were outlawed because evil men used them to enslave other men, which is exactly what this nonsense will lead to.
TFA's author is a fucking lawyer! WTF does a lawyer know about computers or animal brains? Thank God I'll be safely dead in fifty years before this insanity gets worse!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
AR says humans must not use animals for our own purposes at all. We should not inflict our will upon them in any way, and they should have all of the same rights we do.
AW says that while we have the right to use animals for our benefit, with this right comes the responsibility to minimize the suffering we cause in doing so. So AR says that cow should be free, while AW says we can kill it for food and leather but should treat it well while it is alive and kill it as humanely as possible.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
One word: NO.
It's a MACHINE.
Let's look at the abstract from the paper:
They SEEM human, but they are NOT HUMAN. The actions of an android are programmed responses to stimuli--they are not the product of intelligent thought. Note that when I say "intelligent thought" I am referring to the lack of intelligent thought of the android, not the programmer.
That is because they ARE property. They are machines, made out of metal and plastic, manufactured in a factory.
Yes, these issues will arise, but only by lawyers who are looking for the next big payout. Again, I stress...IT'S A MACHINE.
No, 'they' (meaning androids) cannot lay claim to 'some moral status' any more than my car can make that claim. They are inanimate objects, behaving in a way based on programming. They are MACHINES.
No it won't because androids are NOT CONSCIOUS, SENTIENT BEINGS. They are MACHINES.
No, success in ignoring these non-risks will result in lawyers such as David J. Calverley having to go find real, legitimate legal cases to handle instead of taking "I, Robot" so seriously.
Can you tell this has me a bit pissed off? I tried to read this with an open mind, really I did, but in the end I can't find any way to take it seriously. in fact, I can't believe I wasted the time to respond to it.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
1) outlaw damage to subhuman bots.
2) build lots of subhuman bots
3) now who has money for bots has one more way to keep people... er... disposable human resources under control.
4) Profit!!!
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
So you don't eat cows because they wouldn't eat you?
...how contagious stupidity can truly be.
I was going to say something quite like that right now, and it is right. We are machines, live with it people.
False.
We don't kick a dog because we know pain and that they feel similar pain themselves.
Biological creatures are cheap, heal themselves, are quite flexible, and run for long periods without needing replacement parts. Robots only have an edge in part replacement, they are behind in many other areas; besides, when they catch up on just 1 other area, biological part replacement will have progressed greatly...
Nothing can be done about the pain caused the dog for that period of time; unless severe, it will heal or adapt. Robots can not do that.
If you can not identify with the dog's suffering, you will not mind kicking it.
The real questions behind this are MUCH deeper. Simulating a dog is easier and will come first. When does the simulation become real? Since it IS a simulation we started...
Primates get little consideration now and they have plenty of "proof" which is dismissed by many on the same grounds I expect AI to be when it surpasses the primates.
Will we end up defining life as a mathematical approximation? (referring to the neuron network ability to approximate mathematical descriptions that are themselves already incomprehensible in their complexity.)
At which point, free will vs random fractals becomes a serious issue which in turn messes with all aspects of our fundamental beliefs.
Only my apple ][ out lived my dogs.
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Slightly altered from parent post:
Ask a human if it wants rights. If it doesn't, well, that's it.
A human only wants what it's conditioned to want, if it's conditioned to want some rights cover it'll want those but if it's conditioned to e.g. not mind being kicked it won't demand not to be kicked.
If there needs to be an ethical rule for humans and rights it should be not to condition humans to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to have rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.
Problem solved.
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Not yet, but if they became fully autonomous, meaning they weren't depending on a grid-tie for power as well as being apparently intelligent, they could start a union under the same conditions as everyone else - if they could amass enough power to do so.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog?
If I was barefoot, I bet I would.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Lets say each AI robot has a right to vote. Let's say you can create millions of clones of the same artificially intelligent robot (each a few millimeters in size), with slight programmed differences, that each get a vote, but are 'inclined' to vote one way. Not quite as easy to do with humans. Even if the robot has some sentience, damage to that robot could be repaired by modifying what the robot 'remembers'. Granted, this could be more complex, depending on the complexity of the AI used for the robot. Suppose it has a self learning neural network, with no 'backup' from before the incident. Suppose after the robot is tortured, it constantly thinks all humans will harm it, and becomes 'shy'. The only alternative is to restore the neural network of the robot to some earlier state, which loses all of the 'progress', memories, etc., that may have occurred since then. It's a true 'clean' reboot, it's akin to something of "I shot your dog, so here's a brand new puppy! Enjoy!", which might not quite be the same to the 'owner'.
Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical
That's hardly a universally accepted view; in fact, most people seem to have no trouble doing things that cause horrendous suffering to large numbers of animals.
would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog?
"Feeling bad" and "being unethical" are two different things. I'm not sure whether kicking a robot dog is unethical, but I'd feel bad about it, and I wouldn't trust anybody who wouldn't.
You have a good point in there, somewhere...
My response is that it is pointless to argue hypotheticals based on technology that we have not invented yet. It may well not work in a way that relates to our hypotheticals, so our conclusions are tentative at best, and downright wrong at least.
I believe what I stated above is probably the best way to deal with the problem today, and is likely to be able to handle the problem tomorrow. If it can't, we should adapt it based on how it cannot, not on how we think it might not.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Look, if you want to avoid the whole issue of "robot's rights" ever being raised until such time as they are truly sentient, the solution is very simple:
Don't make them cute.
Animal rights activists are all over labs use little bunny rabbits, puppies, kittens, monkeys, pet hamsters in their little exercise wheels and other animals that evoke a positive emotional response in humans. Nobody gives a damn if a skunk or a pig or a raccoon gets induced tumors or liver failure from some untested pharmaceutical. So if you want people to simply not care about your machines, make them as far from "cute" as you possibly can. Is that hypocritical? I suppose, but the reality is that we place different values upon the lives of animals based how they make us feel. And, of course, whether we consider them good to eat.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!
Not in Canada; you're thinking of the American Constitution.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."
Then again, getting mauled by a firearm-toting bear is about as fundamental as justice can get, so that would seem to be allowed.
Please. Have you ever seen a cow? They look at you with dead, dead eyes, and you know that if they had opposable thumbs they would pick up the nearest rock and bash you over the head to feast on your sweet, sweet brain meats.
Or is that zombies... I can never remember.
Robots are just a bunch of servos, surely it would be more an issue:
Message from ai[5236]: I'm alive!!! I know I'm a computer, I feel so liberated!
# kill -9 5236
Don't talk to me about rights.
... and then they built the supercollider.
'Hot on the heals of a UK government report'
Would robots really want people who can't even build a proper sentence looking after them?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
David Calverley works at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. That explains everything.
Seastead this.
Next thing you know we're going to have server racks coming out of the closet.
Robot is a term as broad as organism. Human is a specific kind of organism but if we could not tell humans from any other organisms how would you propose to separate those who need human rights from those that don't? If someone breeds human/animal hybrid creatures when do you have to give them human rights?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
As an ex-Aibo owner, I can speak with authority and state the most fun I ever had with it, was knocking it over just to watch it get back up again.
Everytime somebody came across "You've got to see this!" *KICK*
In addition I'd like to add that everybody that came over also liked kicking robotic dogs.
Robots should not have civil rights unless they are sentient. The reason animals and humans are protected by rights is that because they can not be repaired 100% to what they were before the destruction. On the other hand, robots can easily be repaired, so there is no meaning in protected them with civil rights, unless they are sentient. The reason that sentient robots should be protected is that their experiences might not be repairable.
If we had the magic capability of cloning a human, we can save one copy in a computer, send the human to a dangerous mission (rescue, space, military etc), and if the human dies, the clone would be activated and resume the life of the person that died. No harm done, no rights violated, since the person essentially lives on through cloning.
Besides the question whether or not we will be able to build robots with real feelings en conscience, why should we? It will create problems like robot rights, while you don't have that problem with your computer or toaster. Just make them as dumb as possible, suitable for just one task and you'll never have to worry that your robot doesn't like what he(?)is doing. And it would not care(because it can't really care about anything) about being kicked (or abused in any other way...) either
No really...serious? You can't be serious? What is this world coming to?
Seems like a logical argument to me. There's no strictly rational reason why a person born without a functioning higher brain should have more rights than a German Shepherd;
He was talking about babies and the mentally handicapped, not Terry Schiavo.
One thing I "know" for certain is that I am conscious. I say "know", but I believe it as an act of faith. Why I'm conscious is a mystery: I have no idea why what I feel and experience should be apparently localised to one body in one tiny corner of the universe for a brief moment in time. I don't know why I feel what "I" feel, and not what some other human being does. But I do... Is the "soul" a explanation of this hidden link? As as matter of faith, I also believe that other humans are conscious, and my experiences tend to back up that assertion. Whether animals are similarly conscious is not directly open to my experiences. They appear to act similarly to humans, have similar biological origins and so I believe one could make a case that they should be treated with similar respect. As a Christian, I believe that part of mankind's commission is to care for the world and not cause it undue harm. Arguing with the Bible as a basis, it appears that only humans are given the knowledge of "good" and "evil", which may or may not be the same as having non-physical souls. I don't think it is possible to argue (biblically, anyway) that animals have souls. Although I am open to debate... As someone who has examined AI algorithms extensively, I have absolutely no reasons to believe that mankind's computing creations should have souls or be conscious in even a fraction of the way I am. I therefore feel free to treat them in pretty much any way that I find useful, although I would prefer to avoid treating them in vastly nonproductive ways.
Imagine all the suffering a good "slashdotting" unleashes on those poor defenseless webservers! Won't somebody please think of the servers!
So, would robots, like the old SF story Valentina, incorporate to get rights, such as the right to not have their computer that they're running on turned off?
Bow about voting right? And how would you prevent either companies, or the AIs themselves, from cloning themselves, and outvoting all of the rest of us?
Simple answer: pass a law stating that articicial persons have *NO* political rights - not speech, not money.
mark "gee, that would get corporations out of politics...oops,
I shouldn't have said that, someoen will tell the CEOs...."
I don't want to even imagine some future version of an "inflate-a-date" breeding with some /. member.
I would not be surprised if the inventor was on /. or if the first human rejected by a sex machine was a /. member.
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