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28188. Adam Selene - 4/19/2006 4:36:53 PM

iiibbb, so, you think it's feasible? Even if "god" didn't "breath life" into it, and it didn't have a "soul," you'd still grant it all the rights and respect that we give human life?

Here's the kicker... would you convict someone to the death penalty for killing it?

28189. iiibbb - 4/19/2006 6:19:50 PM

Given the way we have figured out technology I certainly think it is feasible... I'm not sure how we will impliment technology... perhaps the boundary between organic and silicon will become very clouded. Perhaps you could argue that we might not be able to do it without God's hand... and then is it our creation or Gods (are test-tube babies, our creation or God's? Are clones, our creation or God's?...)

Before we can really say whether we will successfully cross the boundary, we must define the boundary or boundaries that define thought and consciousness.

Some would argue life must be self-aware... it must replicate... it must adapt/evolve without guidance from the creator. It must be somewhat unpredictible.


I think the vision that closest matches my vision of what such a technology would be like is that of Blade Runner... the androids appear to be as much organic as inorganic... obviously using DNA as their platform.


Interesting philosphical question about penalizing someone for killing it. Quite difficult for me to get my head around that one. It probably quite depends on the circumstances and how much of a realization of true consciousness I guess.

Blade-Runner does a good job with this question too. I think human nature would respond to it across a spectrum of those who look at it as a product, to those who look at it as real, to those who fear it.

28190. sakonige - 4/19/2006 6:57:07 PM

Is it possible to create an "artifical" intelligence that is not really artificial, but just as real as you or me?

sure. You can see a range of intelligence and self-awareness in animals. At some point in that continuum, you begin to feel empathy for the organism. That's when it becomes as real to you as you or me. The same would hold true for artifacts. At some level of machine self-awareness, you would begin to empathize. You would know how the thing felt.

28191. sakonige - 4/19/2006 7:03:03 PM

I've got a cat resting his cheek on my wrist that is an incredibly complex, loving, and intelligent being. He's as "real" as you or me.

The little spider making its way down the window screen is real, too.

The moss at the edge of the flowerbed, it's alive, but just barely aware.

The computer on the desk is only animated.

28192. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2006 7:04:41 PM

We need to define artificial intelligence. The accepted definition we have is the Turing test: if you correspond with somebody/something and you cannot determine if it is a human or a machine, then in case it is a machine, it has intelligence.

If by "intelligence" you mean knowledge and the ability to apply it in a logical way, I think it can be done. But if you mean, in Adam's words, "just as real as you or me" I think not.

28193. iiibbb - 4/19/2006 7:21:07 PM

I don't know if the Turing test is the accepted definition. There are many exceptions by which a machine could fool a judge.

28194. iiibbb - 4/19/2006 7:24:02 PM

Koko

28195. iiibbb - 4/19/2006 7:27:41 PM

All Ball

28196. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2006 8:41:20 PM

From your Wiki link:

Turing predicted that machines would eventually be able to pass the test. In fact, he estimated that by the year 2000, machines with 109 bits (about 119 MiB) of memory would be able to fool 30% of human judges during a 5-minute test.

Do you really think that is good enough? Shouldn't they be capable of fooling 100% of the judges indefinetely?

But more importantly, do you think that a machine could be as real as "you or me"?

28197. Adam Selene - 4/19/2006 9:11:16 PM

The Turing test isn't as interesting to me as it was before I played with Eliza and that ilk of computer program. You could make the case that Eliza already passed the Turing test - at least it fooled a lot of people for many minutes (and some for a lot longer.)

But I was more thinking of the philosopical issues... is there anything inherent about being man-made that precludes any "real" intelligence? I guess a religous person would phrase it... could it have a soul?"

28198. Adam Selene - 4/19/2006 9:16:39 PM

I like sakonige's criteria - empathy. If you "know" what it's feeling, if you can predict it's behavior due to it's similarity with your own reactions, you would feel that it's really human (or at least, an animal.)

There may be other "kinds" of intelligences than what we consider human, but without that empathy we'd probably never grant it any significant human rights. Rightly or wrongly - anything too different from a human mockup will probably never be accepted. Hell, we as a species have had a hard enough time accepting those with different skin colors and/or religous beliefs as human.

28199. iiibbb - 4/19/2006 10:11:12 PM

The turing test breaks down in light of Koko... as well as a lot of mentally deficient humans.

I'm more likely to buy the empathy argument... or at least some sort of introspective capacity... the capacity for abstract thought is another good "test"... the capacity to link seemingly unrelated topics.


I think it might be very hard for us to judge something we made.

28200. alistairConnor - 4/19/2006 10:12:01 PM

would you convict someone to the death penalty for killing it?

That's easy...

I would never convict anyone to the death penalty, for killing anything.

28201. Adam Selene - 4/20/2006 12:59:00 AM

Alistair - what about life imprisonment? For killing a "sentient machine?"

28202. anomie - 4/20/2006 11:38:49 AM

Not to put too fine a point on things but we already do create entities "as real as us". They start out small and inconvenient but are ready for punishments and self-replication in about 14 years. Some are ready for the death penalty at that age in places like Kansas.

As for crimes committed by an AI entity, the death penalty couldn't possibly apply since it is by definition not "alive". We'd need new punishment protocols like...disassembly with no possiblity of repair. Not life imprisonment, but long term storage, perhaps with eligibility to be cannibalized for parts. For lesser -not crimes but - errors, perhaps a double re-boot, RAM swap out, mother board rebuild. Possibilities to humiliate the machine are endless.

28203. alistairconnor - 4/20/2006 12:17:30 PM

Well. I'm sure we can all recite Asimov's Three Rules for robots. I don't concede that an AI entity could ever have any legal standing whatever.

That's an easy rule. The only problem is if people start monkeying around at the frontier between what's human and what isn't.

* Implanting electronics to enhance human intelligence : problematic; would that diminish legal responsibility?
* Growing a protein brain in a vat, and wiring it up to the outside world? Yecch.

Personally I think all frontier stuff should be outlawed, because I think it's important that we avoid getting into such moral ambiguities.

28204. Adam Selene - 4/20/2006 3:26:20 PM

Outlawed or not, it will happen just like every other possible (and profitable) technology.

One possiblitiy is that, rather than elevate machines to human status, humans will be reduced to bio-machines. And this isn't necessarily bad. For example, if you could "fix" a criminals brain so they didn't want to commit crimes any more... isn't that better than punishment? Rather than "kill" a machine by disassembly, just fix it.

Asimov's rules are only applicable if we truly treat robots as a separate kind of entity and forever formalize their distinction from human beings. (Assuming such highlevel, cognative concepts as the three laws could ever be hardwired in the first place.)

28205. alistairconnor - 4/20/2006 4:58:08 PM

Profitable technology?

At university, one of the profs had a good quote about the futility of AI, which is unlikely ever to be cost effective given the cheap availability of the protein variety.

28206. Adam Selene - 4/20/2006 6:37:55 PM

Well, if you duplicate a human at higher cost, then ya, hardly profitable. But if you create a "pure" intelligence that doesn't need sleep, take coffee breaks, ask for a salary, get pregnant, go on strike, need oxygen, sue anyone, etc... now that's a whole 'nother story.

28207. PelleNilsson - 4/20/2006 6:58:28 PM

Exactly. What is the profit in creating machines that emulate the fuzziness, the unpredictability, the moodiness, the irrationality of us humans? The whole thing is a strawman created by Adam, the best use of which is to chop it up, perhaps by the machine below, and use the proceeds in alistair's pony stables.



International Harvester, model M, 6 HP, 1929.

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