robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6432307.stm check this out

basically, my dear technologically advanced peoples of this community, is that Isaak Azimov future? We all seen AI and iRobot (eventho it was a cheap hollywood flick it now raises a valid point.)

at what point will we, if at any, stop differenciating human right from that of other sentient beings... Will we, the humanity, create another sentient species ? That would need protection of their rights ? Or, rather, create us a bunch of intelligent slaves ? What would you choose, if you had all the reigns ?

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

That worries me...

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

There's no evidence for such an enormous jump in the quality of AI in the "near" future that would make such a debate meaningful.

If we did have an actual artificial intelligence, however, I see no reason why it shouldn't be allowed the same rights of self determination as an individual human.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

it should. in defcom europe usually looses to US, unless they are heavely backed by africa.


and, as its evident now, US security is gonna have bigger better nukes by year 2012...

@ mr.jakiri: this is the type of responce that aleviates responcibility. There is no reason not to debate the topic now. Progress leaps faster that I can immagine (I did NOT know they mapped human genome. That, I have to say, is a much higher of a leap then measly AI). How do you nkow that, when you wake up tomorow, or the day after, this debate will not be actual ?

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I'm ambivalent about it. Obviously less human death is a good thing, though politicians are more likely to go to war if there aren't body bags to worry about. Would iraq be as much of an issue if americans weren't dying?

To be honest though the robot revolution has been promised since the 40s and its never happeneed. Sure they'll get them to work in a few niche areas but i doubt there will be any robot-human battles in the future.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

That you didn't know we'd mapped the human genome is in no way to say that the event 'happened and took everyone by surprise'. The Human Genome Project was established in like 1993, it's not like sequencing the entire thing was a shock 10 years later. That it 'leapt faster than you could imagine' doesn't mean to say that it leapt at all. We're not talking some guy in a lab waking up one morning and thinking 'shit, I know how to sequence the human genome!', it was a massive collaborative effort between private and public research labs, involving tens of thousands of individuals and millions upon millions of man hours.

Most of the reasonably grounded individuals working towards AI know that 'AI' as a term is so broad-ranging as to be meaningless in discussions of this nature. People mix up what we're currently striving for in AI (natural language processing, machine learning, machine vision) are such a leap from any reasonable notion of 'sentience' as to be entirely different spheres of research.

It's a discussion that's as worth having now as is a discussion about how we plan on governing Mars when we eventually colonise it; it's not round-the-corner and it's not going to creep up on anyone. It'll take a concerted effort, massive investment and research collaboration. We're not talking about some whack-job in MIT creating scenes from I, Robot here. The pop-science version of AI is so far removed from the actual research field that I want to shoot every goddamn journo that uses it in an article with a shot from some sci-fi film like the entire point of the field is to somehow create machine-life.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I really have my own doubts over whether we are likely to see a holywood version of robots runing about the place. I also think it's too easy to confuse programmed emotion with human emotion.

My only genuine concern is arming intelligent robots with the ability to injure humans, there are so many things that could go wrong in that scene.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Because some of us have vague awareness of the current state of AI research, and I can pretty much promise you that we arent going to have self-aware robots any time soon. It's possible that there will be a huge overnight jump in our understanding, but it seems fairly unlikely given the large number of problems that this would necessitate being solved almost simultaneously.

Note that the completion of the human genome project was the result of an incremental project that had been going on for many years, rather than something which happened overnight.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I never said it happened overnight ;/ only that i was informed about the near completion of it since recently. I was awere of it, ofcourse, i just didnt know it has achieved any significant results and was still massively theoretical and ongoing.

As to the AI development, how would we know if all of us not are as dumb/ignorant as me ? I never actually implied some guy waking up figguring out complex comprehensive theory of artifical intelligence and implementing it at the same time on a global scale. You misunderstood me. However, its silly to deny the possibility that we, at our current stage of progress, have means to research and develop fully functioning artifical intelligence, I dont have to point out that Computer Technology is, probably, the fastest growing field of research and implementation. We have the means to use it on a body that we can create. So the wuestion is, if there is a talented software writer capable of doing it anywhere in the world. I am not saying it is so, just that its possible. If its likely or not is another discussion.

Its not about if this is within the time when it should be discussed, but if it should, and how if it is indeed so, should it be implemented in our laws and everyday lives.


Have some imagination, if everything else fails to get throught to you, for crying out loud.

So far everyone said, "oh, it too early for us to be able to tell anything".

I am saying our moral values today are as relevant as they would ever were. We dont need to actually HAVE something to apply the law to. Just the mere possibility of the application for this law is the discusison here.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

God won't let it happen.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I hope you're right. AI and I, Robert were terrible films.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

The problem is that if you arent talking about a specific kind of robot (eg one we could actually build), then the question is vague and impossible to answer. And if you do want to specify a certain robot, then the answer will depend entirely on the specifics of the example. If we could create a theoretical robot that was functionally identical to humans in every way, then of course it would have to be given rights. If the robot had a lot of the capabilities of humans except that it couldnt feel pain/suffer, then there would be no reason to give it rights. And so on.

It's like asking "if we encountered a race of aliens, should they be given rights?". It would depend on what sort of aliens they were - if they were just dogs that happened to be green then no, but if they were highly similar to humans in terms of mental capability then yes.

It is though. Noone has any idea whether it's possible to create a robot capable of subjective experience, or one to which concepts of responsibility would apply, and without knowing what kind of robots we're talking about, statements of morality are useless. The BBC article is very sensationalist and implicitly exaggerates the current state of AI research by a fair bit.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

but this is the most tediosly prosaic way to look at this subject.

U cannot examplify something that didnt happen yet.

That is why i beg of you, refer to your imagination, your view of progress withing near future. Not just refering to dry facts and singular possibilities.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

people are misunderestimating mighteh

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

If you tell me specifically what type of AI youre asking about then we can discuss it. I'd be cool with Rimmer from Red Dwarf or Data from Star Trek having rights, for example. But the whole point of these characters is that they were deliberately portrayed as being humans that just happened to also be computers. They arent a good representative of robots/AI in general. Saying that Rimmer should have rights doesnt tell you anything about what we should do with an 'intelligent' vacuum clearner.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Silicon Heaven and Belief Chips are the way forward for our battery operated friends.

Kryten: "He's an android. His brain could not handle the concept of there being no silicon heaven."
Lister: "So how come yours can?"
Kryten: "Because I knew something he didn't."
Lister: "What?"
Kryten: "I knew that I was lying. Seriously, sir. 'No silicon heaven'? Where would all of the vibrators go?"

EDIT- You know I'm not having a good day posting wise, having missed Nods post above I look like a clone. Condolence in emotion is however somewhat reassuring, as long as I compute the Belief Chip is absent.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Red Dwarf points out perfectly what can happen if you give those types rights. i vote 'no'; robots are machines, meant to serve people, not make it harder on them because we designed a 'brain' for them or whatever.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Youre thinking of negros.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Actually I believe that's the Jews koen is talking about.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Rimmer isnt a Robot

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I'm surprised that only horn, thus far, has felt it significant to comment that I answered the question, within certain assumptions.

He is a form of artificial intelligence, however.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

After reading Maladoni's thread i came here to post a comment almost identical to this only to find i'd been beaten like a ginger irish jewish gay stepchild. Woe is me :(

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

I actually don't think the envisioned date of 2020-2025 is all that unreasonable. We are close to breakthroughs in many of the areas of research that will be required. For example, a recent ariticle in Science magazine described a massive breakthrough in the field of quantum computing that has now brought it beyond the merely theoretical into the realm of what we can almost do. 15 years is a long time in compuational evolution and, while true AI may be a stretch, we will surely have Turing capable machines at the very least. No-one can say that would not be an earth shattering advance.

As for the robotics, no-one on Earth knows more about robotics than the South Koreans, not even the Japanese. If they say that it can be done by 2020 I'm inclined to believe them.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

There's no obvious application of quantum computing to AI. Also the problems arent entirely a matter of computational power; I dont think it's fully clear how you would write an algorithm to (eg) pass the Turing Test even if you had an infinite amount of computational power at your disposal. It may be that certain approaches to the problem are intrinsically doomed to failure regardless of what sort of resources you throw at them (personally I dont believe a disembodied AI will ever have a chance of passing the TT).

People have been saying AI is just around the corner for decades now, so it's easy to understand why people are a bit sceptical, especially when you consider the ridiculous sort of claims that were thrown around in the 60s/70s.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

ALICE passed the Turing Test years ago

EDIT: actually no she didn't, my mistake

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Human: hello
ALICE: Hi there!
Human: are you a girl
ALICE: My gender is female.
Human: got a pic?
ALICE: Try asking the Milk Mystic.
Human: lol ya, asl?
ALICE: I am glad you find this funny. " Try asking the Milk Mystic."? lol ya, asl?? 5/Robot/California.

I dunno man, making it a girl is cheating since noone really expects girls on the internet to make sense.

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

she still answered your question though

Human: want to cyber?
ALICE: I have been asked that question more than 100,000 times since 1995.

Now that's just funny

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Do you think "she still answered your question though" is a good thing?

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Human: a/s/l
ALICE: 5/Robot/California.
Human: I like 5 year old girls!
ALICE: I'm not sure if I like it. Yes I like women very much. Do you?
Human: no i prefer girls
ALICE: Are you serious? Do you have a girlfriend?
Human: Yes im serious, i don't believe in monogamy with girls
ALICE: Aw. I believe you. Do you believe life has a higher purpose?
Human: It depends on what you mean by 'higher purpose' my job probably impacts or has a higher purpose or levels but why would it matter to me?
ALICE: Really now that is an interesting fact I hadn't heard before.
Human: It isn't a fact you bint
ALICE: Give me an example of a fact me bint.
Human: I don't suppose you're related to horn?
ALICE: I will tell my botmaster you said I am related to horn.
Human: yo momma

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

lol milo!

oh and she told me she was 9, lying bitch!

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

If there were us robots in iraq than that people would finally stand a chance of advancing from england 1200´s into the XXI century. I for one think it is a good thing, am i rite?

Re: robot rights. good, bad, or ugly ?
 

Human: are you gay?
ALICE: As a machine I am not really interested in sex.
Human: why not?
ALICE: Sex is an animal function, not a robot function. We reproduce by cloning.
Human: how does cloning work?
ALICE: You could spend years researching it.
Human: can you summarise it?
ALICE: How old are you? "it" being cloning?

I win?