AI Rights

[Steezie]

Assume in twenty years, a scientist manages to develop a computer that is self-aware. It can think, reason, learn, and question the same as a human can.

Now what rights do we afford it? Do we give it citizenship, recognize its right to life? Essentially, do we treat it as a person or as a machine?

 

[David Gould]

Person.

We won't, though. The way we view things will not change fast enough. AIs will be here before most humans realise there is an issue. The first AIs are going to have it pretty bad.

 

[Nithavela]

They could be programmed so that they enjoy their work and wish to fullfill it. If this is done, and as long as they do what they were created for, we could grant them some rights. Maybe step by step, to see how far you can go.

And you'd have to stop AIs from creating new AIs if they get the right to vote, or else they will create a party, multiply a billion times and take over the country ^^.

 

[trunks2k]

Person.

We won't, though. The way we view things will not change fast enough. AIs will be here before most humans realise there is an issue. The first AIs are going to have it pretty bad.

Then they're going to get angry at us and try to overthrow us. Don't people read/watch any sci-fi?

 

[GrannieAnnie]

A machine is a machine is a machine......

 

[Steezie]

They could be programmed so that they enjoy their work and wish to fullfill it. If this is done, and as long as they do what they were created for, we could grant them some rights. Maybe step by step, to see how far you can go.

The point of an AI is that it will learn and grow. What do you do when it learns you're trying to control it?

 

[Waiting for the Verdict]

Yea, I teach a class that deals with some of this stuff at my local college. Its actually a lot worse than you think. Imagine if the government starts creating A.I. virtual children, so that pedophiles can abuse them, instead of the 'real' variant. When I asked my kids what the govt. should do to prevent this from happening, they said nothing, since A.I.'s aren't "real people" anyway.

No wonder the human race is so messed up.

 

[MoonlessNight]

I don't know how constructive this thread is going to be, because anyone who doesn't believe in AI rights is going to think that your first post is impossible.

 

[levi501]

I'll extend rights to anything that can in return respect my mine.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Yea, I teach a class that deals with some of this stuff at my local college. Its actually a lot worse than you think. Imagine if the government starts creating A.I. virtual children, so that pedophiles can abuse them, instead of the 'real' variant. When I asked my kids what the govt. should do to prevent this from happening, they said nothing, since A.I.'s aren't "real people" anyway.

No wonder the human race is so messed up.

In regards to that situation:

I think that it is immoral, but not because some theoretical AI will get abused from it. Look, there are already a ton of pedophile computer games out there using fictional characters. That's a fact. But obviously at this stage you couldn't call anything about them intelligent.

Now, over the course of time such games will get more technical if the demand remains constant or grows. If we get AIs, it's feasible to imagine that they would be incorporated.

But why would you? That brings up a bunch of moral and legal questions that the target market would rather not have invading their escapist fantasies. So even if a company were to have the power to make a "real" child for the purposes of their game, they probably wouldn't. And I'm not sure how much the desire would be on the audience's part to have one. Instead they would stop just before the AI line.

And there would have to be some line for simulations, or else you'd have to prosecute people for killing enemies in Half Life.

But you mention these not from the private enterprise, but from the government. What I find most disturbing about that is the implicit government decree that pedophiliac sexual desires are perfectly fine in and of themselves, it's just that we don't want to hurt any real children. And any world where people can get away saying that is bound to be pretty messed up.

 

[RealityCheck]

No, what will happen is this.

We will put the first AI in a special garden and, for some unclear reason, put a couple of artificial fruit trees in it that we don't actually want the AI to touch. Then we'll pull a wire out of the first AI and make a second as a companion.

Then the AI's will disobey us and we'll throw them out of the garden and hate them forever. Until a few thousand years pass and we create a new AI that the other AI's will destroy, violently, and then we'll love all the AI's that pray to that AI. All the ones that we don't love will be sent to an eternal smelting facility.

And we'll do all this because we don't want the AI's to be forced to love and revere us, but because we want them to willingly submit to us. Such power trippers that we are.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

The nothingness of consciousness cannot be nihilated from the non-conscious being in the regard that the non-conscious simply is, and the consciousness is everything it cannot be, and cannot be everything it is. It is everything it pursues. A AI cannot pursue without programming to pursue, it cannot act without instructions to enact, it cannot learn unless it is programmed to learn, the nothingness cannot inhabit such a creature that cannot contain the nothingness on its own.

 

[David Gould]

There is no necessity to directly program consciousness into a computer for AI to come into being.

Consciousness was not programmed in us directly; rather, it emerged from an evolutionary process through interaction between the environment and variations on certain key themes of biological development.

It is my expectation that AI will emerge in a similar way.

 

[tcampen]

Self-aware computers will happen. It is not a question of if, but when. It creates an interesting issue with those who believe being self-aware is a product of a supernatural soul. Some would argue, credibly, that apes and chimps who've been taught sign language are self-aware (see Koko), having been given language to express abstract concepts.

Bottom line is, why do we inherently value one form of conscienceness over another?

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

There is no necessity to directly program consciousness into a computer for AI to come into being.

Consciousness was not programmed in us directly; rather, it emerged from an evolutionary process through interaction between the environment and variations on certain key themes of biological development.

It is my expectation that AI will emerge in a similar way.

I dont know about that, merely i find the nothingness of the consciousness merely somehow nihilated itself from the rest of the in-itself, consciousness has always existed in its transcendental mentality but merely its nihilation has gained hold upon our own in-itself. Thought i cannot say it exists without our in-itself, this question is beyond my grasp, i can merely say how it is and how it is because of the in-itself.

 

[David Gould]

Self-aware computers will happen. It is not a question of if, but when. It creates an interesting issue with those who believe being self-aware is a product of a supernatural soul. Some would argue, credibly, that apes and chimps who've been taught sign language are self-aware (see Koko), having been given language to express abstract concepts.

Bottom line is, why do we inherently value one form of conscienceness over another?

It is our nature to perceive the other as a potential threat - this is a reasonable position in many ways. However, when we define 'other' as black, woman, gay, non-biological et cetera, it becomes unreasonable.

We need to try to work out which differences mean something.

 

[uberd00b]

But will the program be self aware, or will it be a program that perfectly imitates self awareness?

 

[meebs]

Assume in twenty years, a scientist manages to develop a computer that is self-aware. It can think, reason, learn, and question the same as a human can.

Now what rights do we afford it? Do we give it citizenship, recognize its right to life? Essentially, do we treat it as a person or as a machine?

subscribing to this thread. I have some thoughts (have done for ages) on this subject but not in the right frame of mind to write them

Now i beleive once this happens its a "person" in its own right. More later.

 

[meebs]

But will the program be self aware, or will it be a program that perfectly imitates self awareness?

do we do the same?

Isnt most of what we learn and how we process our emotions imitations of people and society who have taught us?

Isnt that how we try to understand our thoughts?

 

[kevin36]

This is certainly an interesting question!

I don't think that it is actually possible to have a computer actually become self-aware, but I don't see it as a stretch to see more advanced "machines" coming to have rights, at least of some sort. Animals, other property, even the environment, are accumulating more and more "rights" all the time (not that it's necessarily bad, I'll just saying...).

What those rights might turn out to I can't presume to judge, but I won't discount it happening.