AI Spoilers ahead!
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Erik complained about the lack of "downloaded humans" from the third
act of AI. But why? Where did the advanced mecha come from? I think
it is clear that they have emotions, etc, and so are derived from the
breakthrough that created David. But, suppose there were mechas that
were downloaded copies of people. Well, I imagine that a reasonable
sentient benevolent mecha civilization would try to "cure" such
delusional mechas. After all, even though they think they are human
beings they are really mechas. A little therapy should be enough to
show a logical mecha that it really couldn't be the human it thinks it
is.
Now, about AI itself. Let's look at the distinction between "real" and
"simulated" emotions and thoughts. I would hold that there is no
fundamental distinction between the two, that a sufficiently complex
simulation of emotion is equivalent to a real emotion.
I guess I always have a problem with the way that fiction usually
portrays robots. They are portrayed as able to think, act, understand
english, and navigate the physical world, but they are not to feel
emotions, must follow orders, are programmed, etc. It seems to me that
a machine that mimics animal life could not really work this way. Just
the ability to walk around and not bump into the walls is still beyond
our capability. Getting to that level...to a machine that can exhibit
the same intellectual abilities as a dog...and you're 95% of the way to
a self-aware, emotion feeling conscious machine.
A robot that could navigate the physical environment enough to "seem"
human would pretty much require "self-awareness". A robot that could
parse english sentences and give back reasonable responses would pretty
much have to be sentient. What would a "simulated thought" be, except
a thought? There is no way to tell the difference between them. Same
thing with simulated emotions. Well, you could program a mannequin to
smile when you say hello. But if it can understand human speech well
enough to smile when it hears a joke, how is that simulation?
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Darryl
Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially
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