Ethics of robot servitude article.

[The Egg]

But at the point the organic is fully replaced by the cybernetic, is it still a human being? Does it still have legal rights?

[xodar]

If it started as a biological entity it should legally remain one.
If the human personality and knowledge can actually be transferred to a machine and remain recognizable to others as that person, it's a person with a prosthetic body.

This is why if it's possible to construct such a machine from parts it wouldn't be a good idea. Another can of worms and when you bring in lawyers and "philosophers" you only worsen matters.

I'm more interested in the control of biology and see machines as a stage in that. They're already talking about the possibility of growing new limbs (children can grow new fingers at times anyhow), which will make even the best prosthetic limbs temporary crutches.
Maybe we can store persons in computers for future "incarnation". The rat experiment suggests it. The computers are incubators.
Biological entities are fallible because they are designed to die and make room for possibly better adapted offspring, because other organisms are constantly evolving ways to parasitize or kill them, and because they are basically carbon and small amounts of metal rather than metal and ceramic.
I don't know what possibilities will unfold in the next hundred years, but anything good will be despite the attacks and spewings of lawyers and "philosophers", particularly "ethicists".

[Asato]

If sapient machines are possible (and I believe they are) then their creation is inevitable, assuming our civilization survives up to the point where we have the technology to create them. If for no other reason, someone will create one just to see if it can be done. So just saying "it shouldn't happen" is nothing more than wishful thinking.

[The Egg]

If sapient machines are possible (and I believe they are) then their creation is inevitable, assuming our civilization survives up to the point where we have the technology to create them. If for no other reason, someone will create one just to see if it can be done. So just saying "it shouldn't happen" is nothing more than wishful thinking.

That assumes that first, the end result is inevitable (based on a complete lack of evidence that it is even possible), and second, that humans are unable to control their actions. While I admit most humans do have a rather large disinclination at doing so, it's kind of insulting to the entire concept of will to assume that someone will press the big red button just because it exists, if it even exists. On the important things humans have proven fully capable of containing themselves and others from inciting disaster. We've lived with proliferated nuclear weapons for 70 years now, for example, and thus far no one has started the apocalypse, contrary to all manner of doom-and-gloom Mad Max fiction written since. One might also assume that when humanity reaches the level of competence required to construct artificial life, that reaching that level may also require a maturity that governs when and how to make such life.

[King Snarf]

I had a thought- most of our emotional reactions stem from two main causes: 1) Culture/ upbringing and 2) Biochemistry. Now, depending on how you feed info to your fembot, #1 might be an issue, but #2 won't crop up at all. People who don't get enough sunlight become depressed because of a lack of endorphins (I think; I'm a little rusty on my biology), but robots would not.

Basically, because of their artificial nature, even if they had emotions, their emotional reaction to certain stimuli is going to be different many times.

[The Egg]

Excellent point, Snarf. For that matter, who knows if they would even have the same kinds of emotions? Robots might have entirely new emotional states that we aren't chemically able to replicate. They might have something halfway between envy and ecstasy, or three-quarters hatred with one-quarter listless, or something we can't even define in terms of our own emotions.

[xodar]

They need have no emotions since they will be constructed by us. Emotions are a rather complicated survival system that can enable a creature with minimal consciousness to deal with crises and mating. Now instead of overwhelmingly setting off instinctive and mechanical reactions they can be largely overridden by reason.

If you're building a bot there's no reason to recapitulate the incredibly long and convoluted development of biological sentience any more than you should assemble a computer first with vacuum tubes and then replace them with or add transistors.

Such an entity, however, would lack any empathy or internal map of others' minds unless these are provided and would simply seek the most efficient path to a goal. That's another reason they should be preprogrammed, including the extent to which they can learn and what they can learn.

[Asato]

You know there are already many scientists working on creating "strong AI", no one is restraining themselves. There are also projects to map and duplicate human minds.

[The Egg]

You know there are already many scientists working on creating "strong AI", no one is restraining themselves. There are also projects to map and duplicate human minds.

So what? They're not one one-millionth where they would need to be to start worrying about ethical issues of suppressing sentient lifeforms. Contrary to what Star Trek leads us to believe, science is not just a matter of running the scan and letting the magical leprechaun inside the Enterprise computer tell us all the intimate details. It's a continuum of questions and answers that reveals extremely small pieces of the overall puzzle only with painstaking attention to detail. That doesn't invalidate my argument because someone is working on it; in fact it validates it.

[xodar]

You know there are already many scientists working on creating "strong AI", no one is restraining themselves. There are also projects to map and duplicate human minds.

Nobody said they weren't.
I'm just not sure even the people who favor it would be happy with the results.

Think of the political groups in Europe and N. America who claim that the Islamic extremists are "just" expressing themselves and have every right to demand Western society be destroyed, all the Jews killed, and everyone who refuses to convert or be enslaved should have their throats cut. Just words, free expression like the movies. It isn't just rhetoric, however, but precisely what they want to do, as their defenders will find out if the extremists succeed and begin hanging gay people, shooting Jews, Christians, and atheists, and then hang the people who defended their right to express themselves. The fact that "they aren't all that way" is meaningless since success breeds more and more followers, much as the successful American colonists became able to follow up their plan to take the Indians' land and try to kill them all. This isn't something only white western Europeans do, it's what everybody with a cohesive identity or some new kind of power does.

Possibly not all people working on fully sentient machines have it in mind but they'd be able to turn out intelligent, emotionless (and fearless) machines to serve them. The best scenario is a welter of more "moral problems" and "philosophical discussions" that could be avoided.

[Asato]

These philosophical points will have to be addressed if our civilization survives long enough to build them

[King Snarf]

These philosophical points will have to be addressed if our civilization survives long enough to build them

Yes, but considering the half-assed way our civilization does everything else, they won't.

[Asato]

That's a defeatist attitude

[The Egg]

Agreed, and unwarranted rhetoric. We live in a grand age of interconnectivity and opportunity. More people are alive now than have ever been before, and more of them have lives of far higher quality before. Surely not all the problems have been solved yet, but calling the progress so far "half-assed" is unhelpful and dismissive.

[xodar]

Agreed, and unwarranted rhetoric. We live in a grand age of interconnectivity and opportunity. More people are alive now than have ever been before, and more of them have lives of far higher quality before. Surely not all the problems have been solved yet, but calling the progress so far "half-assed" is unhelpful and dismissive.

True. We've exceeded all other civilizations in every field and in delivering a better life to more people -- we being Western civilization followed by those that have adopted science and certain other elements -- and the only decline is a slide toward government control of everything.

Most people I've known who complained about how terrible our civilization is have lived safe, even sheltered lives and who mean by that that slavery once existed and ended 150 years ago and that there are people who don't want to work or who are addicts living on the streets, that animals and plants are adapting to the urban world and are no longer noticed, and the climate is gradually changing as it always has even before humans existed. Things like that.

Continuing as we have, correcting errors rather than giving up, that's the way to go.
No sentient robot can be powered by a windmill....

[--NightBattery--]

[quote="xodar"][quote="The Egg"]animals and plants are adapting to the urban world and are no longer noticed [quote]
he. that's very hiiiiiiigh wishful thinking.

[dale coba]

In the face of environmental Apocalypse, our "Progress" is tentative, mortgaged, and reversible.

- Dale Coba

[xodar]

he. that's very hiiiiiiigh wishful thinking.

Well, while I don't notice any buffalo or bears I do see coyotes and have seen the occasional mountain lion (I hesitate to sey "couger" any more) inside the city. Most wildlife is small and insignificant in human terms (humans being fairly large) and easily adapts. Wild plants are called "weeds" and flourish wherever ornamental plants aren't tended, though the latter often adapt and become native. Trees take a long time to reach noticeable size. I've seen wooded areas here that people assured me were suburban neighborhoods 45 years ago. I found cracked and broken concrete house slabs there when I looked, among possums, armadillos, rats, and the like.

Self-hatred isn't wisdom or insight.

[fembot_stalker]

APPARENTLY september is the month of robot ethics awareness so... i'll just leave this article... here.
http://stevepetersen.net/professional/p ... vitude.pdf

If we build them they will be machines.
Modified living matter is different, even artificially created living matter, but a machine is a machine.

I agree with you there, Xodar!