On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/1/18 silky <michaelsli...@gmail.com>:
> > It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to
> > do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to
> > find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some
> > other properties, we can easily model simply pets.
>
> Brent's reasons are valid,

Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel
guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I
know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I
can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some
randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think "No, you
can't harm X". But what I find very interesting, is that even if I
knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one.


> but I don't think making an artificial
> animal is as simple as you say.

So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the
entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is
it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only
work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and
then that is where the guilt comes in.


> Henry Markham's group are presently
> trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000
> neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way.
> This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go
> before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will
> start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years
> away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman
> AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have
> feelings and are worth preserving.

Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an
AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or
perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's "own
thing", but is that in itself wrong?


> --
> Stathis Papaioannou

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

crib? Unshakably MINICAM = heckling millisecond? Cave-in RUMP =
extraterrestrial matrimonial ...
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