On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 08:55:58AM -0500, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
>
>
> Well, um, we've been making computers for 50 years and haven't yet made
> one with real emotions....one presumes that it's quite technically
> difficult. (And why would you want to? Slaves with real emotions are a
> pain in the ass.) On top of which, there's the problem of understanding
> emotions well enough to program for them in the first place (Ding! Ding!
> Philosophical issue alert!). :-)
That's a poor analogy. Are computers aren't anywhere near as
sophisticated as the robots they could make. And what-his-name robot
scientist at the beginning implied that they had been making robots
almost as sophisticated for 50 years. The sophistication of their robots
and no one having explored this before (after all, it's the first thing
the movie makers thought of, so of course some one would try it!) is
what I was questioning.
> > 2) There is no good reason for the imprinting being irreversible. An
> > adequate hardware and software protected reset command should be
> > easily doable.
>
> There is if, as Prof. Hobby suggests at the scene in Manhattan, their
> goal is not merely to create simulacrum emotions but to create a robot
> that's truly self-motivated, with a rich inner life--that has a "self"
> as opposed to merely a sophisticated program. It's reasonable to
> suppose that a sufficiently complicated artificial "brain," like a
> real one, wouldn't have a convenient reset switch.
I don't think it is reasonable. By far the most likely type of hardware
that we will use to create a robot brain will be sufficiently like
current computers that a reset function will be quite feasible. And
desirable, unless you are trying to write in a cute plot device to a
story.
>
> > 9) None of the humans attempted to download their personalities and
> > knowledge into a robot (seeing as how some robots survived?)
>
> The ability to build a robot doesn't imply the ability to extract
> intact human personalities from human brains.
No, but the sophistication of the robots they built, combined with the
fact that it could have been hundreds of years before the humans were
wiped out, suggests that something could be done. You don't have to have
perfect transfer either, at least not preserving consciousness per se,
but I think it is reasonable to believe that they could transfer quite
a bit of knowledge and personality traits given the sophistication of
their technology.
--
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/
