I'm actually optimistic about corporate personhood.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

From now on, I'll just stick to posting one liners and reading about your shitty lives in Open Bar.  Everything else I try to talk about has this shabby crap happen to it.

That's a bit harsh dude.
I tried to contribute to the convo, as I'm sure everyone else did. I'm just not sure what you're going for here.

[Jasper]

That last comment wasn't for you.  This one is.


Outer space may be the final frontier, but it's just a matter of time and engineering.  And it's nice here, so why leave?

I say the final frontier is the problem of consciousness.  Once it is solved, then I'm fairly comfortable with a pleasingly scientific notion of "reality", and all the metaphysicists and cartesian dualists and all the fuckers who think there is a soul, or magic-

-can fuck off, eat shit, and die in a tire fire.

And that is why I want to make machine consciousness.

There, you've found out that my life goal is to leave a big "fuck you all" in the history books.  Happy?

[Requia ☣]

If you want people to agree with you you are in the wrong place.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

That last comment wasn't for you.  This one is.


Outer space may be the final frontier, but it's just a matter of time and engineering.  And it's nice here, so why leave?

I say the final frontier is the problem of consciousness.  Once it is solved, then I'm fairly comfortable with a pleasingly scientific notion of "reality", and all the metaphysicists and cartesian dualists and all the fuckers who think there is a soul, or magic-

-can fuck off, eat shit, and die in a tire fire.

And that is why I want to make machine consciousness.

There, you've found out that my life goal is to leave a big "fuck you all" in the history books.  Happy?

Not particularly. I was expecting a more interesting motive. The topic seems to interest you so, I thought it would be more than going bwahaha, there's no soul!

[Vene]

Neuroscience is already killing the soul, a machine wouldn't be any more definitive to the people who believe it in than an actual understanding of consciousness. They'd twist in some way like how Venter's bacteria is being twisted as proof of creationism even if it is completely removing the supernatural.

I prefer much more concrete reasons. For example, 'because we can' is a great reason to me. Or, maybe, 'to see if we can.' Practicality be damned, doing something for the sake of doing it is why there's science.

[Jasper]

If you want people to agree with you you are in the wrong place.

I don't expect you to agree, but I do expect people to discuss the topic of a thread at least a little bit before changing the subject.  This topic is not about the how/why of AI, it is about the civil rights issues we will face when machines start thinking more deeply.

I do ask you, for the sake of the discussion, to assume that there will eventually be AGI, and that it's rights will be a big problem to solve.

[Jasper]

Not particularly. I was expecting a more interesting motive. The topic seems to interest you so, I thought it would be more than going bwahaha, there's no soul!

Why assume I'm interesting?

I mean, there ARE good reasons to conclusively identify and reproduce the mechanisms of  consciousness, and they are reasons I agree with, but the main one that I think of when I'm in a pissy mood is that I hate supernaturalists.

I can explain more in another thread about why I want to do this, but I'd like to stay on topic ITT.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Not particularly. I was expecting a more interesting motive. The topic seems to interest you so, I thought it would be more than going bwahaha, there's no soul!

Why assume I'm interesting?

I mean, there ARE good reasons to conclusively identify and reproduce the mechanisms of  consciousness, and they are reasons I agree with, but the main one that I think of when I'm in a pissy mood is that I hate supernaturalists.

I can explain more in another thread about why I want to do this, but I'd like to stay on topic ITT.

Well, ok- so you were mentioning in the sci-fi novel that the machines in question would have to acquire an LLC status. Is that the best way that a robot could acquire rights or should be have like, a civil rights bill for them where they are legally recognized as on par with an individual (up to a certain degree of consciousness)? What rights should a robot have (again, I think this is largely dependent on its programming)? Would the robot be self-programming, much like we are?

I think, for my opinion at least, that it would have to be equal to individual human status. If it's  basically a "person" it should be treated as such, and I think that this should be achieved partially through legislation and partially through judicial rulings. Does anyone know how Japan is going about it? I heard that they were already debating potential AI rights legislation, and how it would look if it were achieved, though I could be wrong.

[Jasper]

You activated my trap card.  Yes, a conscious intelligence should be treated well and given legal rights, if only to avoid giving them a reason to kill us.  Yes, it should happen the moment one comes into being.  It won't.  Whatever these things ends up looking like, it probably won't look as human as a black person, and it took us how long to treat them like humans?  Realistically, it isn't a question of whether or not we SHOULD treat machine consciousnesses well, it's a matter of how do we do it?  Even with clear direction and the mandate of the people, legislation is not fast.  Rather, when it is fast, someone's usually being scammed.  So we can't expect direct legislation to address this issue in a timely manner.

As for Japan, I found this:
http://innovationwatch-archive.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours-2007-02-15.htm

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working on a new set
of safety guidelines for next-generation robots. An article in LiveScience outlines the intent: "This set of regulations would constitute a first attempt at a formal version of the first of Asimov's science-fictional Laws of Robotics, or at least the portion that states that humans shall not be harmed by robots." "Japan's ministry guidelines will require manufacturers to install a sufficient number of sensors to keep robots from running into people. Lighter or softer materials will be preferred, to further prevent injury. Emergency shut-off buttons will also be required."

According to the article, "People in Japan are particularly concerned about this problem, due to the accelerating efforts to create robots that will address the coming labor shortage in Japan's elder care industry."

From what one can gather from articles mentioning the regulations (they are in the making, and are expected to be finished by the end of the year) they seem to assume a non-sentient robot. The guidelines would not be able to deal with robots depicted in the movie I, Robot but more or less with robots depicted in the science fiction movies of the 1960s. Of course these 'robot machines' should be safe — as should any machinery. I do not even understand why the Japanese guidelines outlined in the articles became a news item. We regulate the safety of machines all the time.

Summed up, the Japanese are really just trying to protect humans.  By assuming nonsentience.

Which will help for a time.  But it won't look any better than what we've got now.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

You activated my trap card.  Yes, a conscious intelligence should be treated well and given legal rights, if only to avoid giving them a reason to kill us.  Yes, it should happen the moment one comes into being.  It won't.  Whatever these things ends up looking like, it probably won't look as human as a black person, and it took us how long to treat them like humans?  Realistically, it isn't a question of whether or not we SHOULD treat machine consciousnesses well, it's a matter of how do we do it?  Even with clear direction and the mandate of the people, legislation is not fast.  Rather, when it is fast, someone's usually being scammed.  So we can't expect direct legislation to address this issue in a timely manner.

As for Japan, I found this:
http://innovationwatch-archive.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours-2007-02-15.htm

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working on a new set
of safety guidelines for next-generation robots. An article in LiveScience outlines the intent: "This set of regulations would constitute a first attempt at a formal version of the first of Asimov's science-fictional Laws of Robotics, or at least the portion that states that humans shall not be harmed by robots." "Japan's ministry guidelines will require manufacturers to install a sufficient number of sensors to keep robots from running into people. Lighter or softer materials will be preferred, to further prevent injury. Emergency shut-off buttons will also be required."

According to the article, "People in Japan are particularly concerned about this problem, due to the accelerating efforts to create robots that will address the coming labor shortage in Japan's elder care industry."

From what one can gather from articles mentioning the regulations (they are in the making, and are expected to be finished by the end of the year) they seem to assume a non-sentient robot. The guidelines would not be able to deal with robots depicted in the movie I, Robot but more or less with robots depicted in the science fiction movies of the 1960s. Of course these 'robot machines' should be safe — as should any machinery. I do not even understand why the Japanese guidelines outlined in the articles became a news item. We regulate the safety of machines all the time.

Summed up, the Japanese are really just trying to protect humans.  By assuming nonsentience.

Which will help for a time.  But it won't look any better than what we've got now.

OK, I see what you're saying.
Well, historically its the courts who end up guaranteeing rights. But that would have to be based on interpretation of the Constitution, naturally. So I guess that would be how it went about.

Honestly though, I think that AI is far off enough into the future that legislation would be able to catch up by then. If people are debating AI rights now, and it ain't coming, presumably, any time in the first half of this century we have time to work it out.

[Jasper]

I worry that if an advanced AGI/intelligent machine comes online in a world like this one, it will set a very poor precedent for our relationship with them.  I think that the level of potential abuse for technology like this has only been faintly imagined.

That's all.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I worry that if an advanced AGI/intelligent machine comes online in a world like this one, it will set a very poor precedent for our relationship with them.  I think that the level of potential abuse for technology like this has only been faintly imagined.

That's all.

Well, what solutions would you propose?

[Requia ☣]

Part of the problem with AI rights is that we don;t actually know what an AI will be like.  They may not actually be capable of free will, constrained by the programming they were given at creation.  Or a psuedo hive mind, where there's no way to pick a single individual out of the mass of all AIs, yet smaller groups than the whole are capable of functioning independently.  What if they are free willed individuals, but turn out to need so little hardware to run that they multiply into the trillions in a matter of years, do you really want to give a trillion AIs a vote, making humanity completely irrelevant?

You're trying to come up with solutions to a problem without reading the problem first.

[Jasper]

Hmm.  I see the problem there.

I don't think I ever said they should have a vote, just that they should have basic freedoms.  You're right, voting is out of the question.  But some of the bill of rights would surely apply, within reason and context.

[Jasper]

One possibility is to create a new class of citizenship for nonbiological entities, that can be applied for to obtain various reasonable freedoms.  They do that in GB, if I recall.  Various classes of citizenship, that is. 

They do have a cultural invasion problem though.