Rights of the artifically intelligent

HAL-K is starting to get angry.

You don't want HAL-K to get angry.

:I
J-D

Post 21

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 4:03pm

In all seriousness, Michael, no, not me. But the world is not me, and there are people out there who would do what you fear. Try taking a nap on the streets of New York and see how long your rights are respected simply because you are a rational, reasoning human being with certain inalienable rights. You can claim rights all you want, but if you don't have the force to defend them, or the ability to hire someone to do it for you, your rights mean nothing.

Post 22

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 7:54pm

But Joe, if you're right, surely that means that the anarchists are wrong?!

Hey, wait, it does :-)

Post 23

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:05am

Joe Maurone wrote: "You can claim rights all you want, but if you don't have the force to defend them, or the ability to hire someone to do it for you, your rights mean nothing."

Well the question here is not what rights does any being have, but what rights will a non-human sentient have? Obviously, since rights depend on volition, any volitional creature (human, Martian, or robot) will have the same rights.

From that, other questions remain. I agree with you 100%, actually, that so-called "natural rights" are a fallacy. "Rights" are only social conventions. However, there is a deeper discussion still. Self-awareness can be the foundation for a definition of "rights" as goals. This takes rights out of the social context and places them within the individual. Therefore, "natural rights" (so-called) will still exist, whether anyone else recognizes them or not. Slaves still have natural rights and slavery is naturally wrong. The truth that you are mortal rests on the fact that you are alive. Being alive does not prevent death. Having rights does not prevent their violation -- you still have them.

Duncan Bayne wrote: But Joe, if you're right, surely that means that the anarchists are wrong?!
Hey, wait, it does :-)

No, it means that the anarchists are right. Joe said, "... or the ability to hire someone to do it for you..." Free market defense agencies protect your rights now. There are more private guards than public police, no matter how you measure it. The markets for private security eclipse public law enforcement two-to-one by dollar volume. You do not notice private rights protection because it prevents violations, whereas the government police only act after the violation takes place.

Of course, hiring someone only allows you to tranfer your primary action. As Joe said, "... if you don't have the force to defend them..." So, you (not the government) do have primary responsibility for your own rights. I would make that statement more positively. It is an intellectual legacy from America frontier traditionalism that we Objectivists still adopt crackerbarrel conservative talk of "defending" our rights. That may be necessary, but to focus on that is to confuse health with the absence of sickness. It is true that sickness is a lack of health. However, maximum health goes beyond not sneezing in this moment. So, too, the instantiation of your rights does go beyond preventing other people from stepping on your toes.

Post 24

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:38am

"Being alive does not prevent death. Having rights does not prevent their violation"

Being alive requires unceasing effort to stay alive. Having rights requires unceasing effort to keep them.

What do you think the "effort" required to keep rights consists of? I believe it is constant vigilance and the willingness to use force, even if force by proxy.

"The markets for private security eclipse public law enforcement two-to-one by dollar volume."

This is part of the "constant vigilance". What do you tell the private security guards if force needs to be used? "Call the cops"!

Post 25

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 1:22pm

hmmmm.... the only thing i can agree with thus far is Michaels "Rights are only social conventions."

The right to think what we think, to be free of unsanctioned intrusion, and to freely express ourselves - accepting the same rights in our fellow humans.

I see rights as law - maybe based on social conventions, but still law - nothing more nothing less. I fail to see rationality granting any more rights than skin color. If those rights should somehow reflect morality i fail to see why humans should hold some universal rights over other animals, just as i fail to see why other animals should hold any universal rights over us - our moral rights systems can't really be mixed, we have our human morality and we can use that to decide by what kind of oppressive power we will allow humans to control other species, humans can sanction human actions.

Man has been trading rights like any other animal - ManA sells the right to privacy to ManB and his asking price is his own right to privacy. Other less complex social animals with the capability to distinguish own species from others, have rights systems as well, things they can and can't do in order to fit in the group, being less complex, direct brute force often dictates those rights - though most individual animals will still keep their right to freely leave the group.

The thing with AI is that you can't create humans by emulation. Everything that makes man man is what makes man man... you can't create just the mind as the mind of man IS all of man, arms, legs, missing limbs, eyes - and everything that man has experienced over a life time; sensations of pain and pleasure, touch, smell, vision, sound, taste... however much we try to emulate all of these things, improving them, we end up, a couple of thousand years down the line, with the perfect human... being the human. We can however emulate particular abilities of man, this on the other hand will not be the creation of a human... filling memory blocks with bits of binary data in a pattern that will allow the memory blocks to erase and modify its data according to external input, will still need man to hardcode the rules. However aging it might be, we can endlessly copy its memory blocks, storing them, giving them to new memory containers. We may create robots that talk like us, move like us, and look like us ... but they will still be robots and should not be given the right to adopt our children.

If brain transplant should become possible - linking the seemingly endless amount of nerves from a body to a foreign brain then all we will have created if successful would be a new body for that mind - it would in fact not be a brain transplant but rather a body transplant.

Post 26

Wednesday, August 24, 2005 - 11:21pm

     Uh-h-h-h, at this point, no one's really talking anymore within the framework of Rand's existential definition of 'rights' (which applies to any species) anymore, correct?
     And...the discussion now is ONLY in terms of the framework-perspective of rights as being nothing more than 'granted-permission,' rather than 'recognized-as-existentially-inherent,' correct?
     Just trying to get the discussion-terms identified...or 'crystallized'..., here.

LLAP
J-D

Post 27

Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 9:22am

The entire problem with this thought experiment is that relies upon the primacy of consciousness. Any artificial intelligence we could create would be transportable from one device to another. However, consciousness cannot exist apart from the physical entity it arose within. If it could, then consciousness would be the ghost in the machine, which is a primacy of consciousness fallacy. Therefore, any apparent self-awareness of an artificial intelligence would be nothing but an epiphenomenon of human design and manufacturing. It would not be real.

Andy

Post 28

Sunday, August 28, 2005 - 3:10am

Andy:
     I presume that by 'transport' you're not talking about physical-change of 'brain' from one body/container to another (as humans will be doing re brain/body-transplants in the future), but are talking about that way over-used (and often mis-interpreted) term 'downloading,' correct? (or 'uploading'...whichever.)

     If so, let's keep in mind that in doing either of the latter 2, we're really talking about making a copy, correct? There's really no 'transport'/transfer of-the-original to speak of (StarTrek's 'beaming' information-patterns pseudo-science techno-babble, and The Fly nwst)...other than the electrons used to make-a-copy.
.
     True, there has been established that info at location A can be transferred to location B to practically instantaneously produce a 'copy' of a statue at A over at B (re a computerized 'robot' carving a Buddha copy in wax at B), but, I doubt that beyond a static set of 3-D co-ordinates, anything approaching a 'dynamic' system (such as even a plant) is probably impossible; and that's just talking physical-dynamic systems, never mind mental ones.

     I'll be the 1st to agree that such 'transfer' of a consciousness will never occur, anymore than transferring a magnetic field or statue's shape, ergo, any apparent 'transfer' of a robot's "consciousness" would clearly be merely 'copying' a program, sophisticated though it may be.

     But, to agree with that does not mean that an 'artificial' intelligence is inherently and necessarily ONLY a mere program, or program-set (any more than an 'organic/natural' one is). --- Sure, so far they are. Maybe, that's the way things will always stay...maybe...and, for all not only *I*, but as far as I can see, everbody else can know about this...m-a-y-b-e not. We just don't know enough about what we even mean by 'intelligence' or 'sapience' to know how and why it can't exist in objects X,Y, or Z, never mind what criteria to go by in recognizing for sure that it even IS there (look at studies re chimps and dophins...and human-fetuses), or, even what we clearly mean when using the terminology.

     At the risk of starting a thread-hijack, I repeat that I'm the 1st to agree that there'll never be a 'beaming' technology in the future; such is 'science'-fantasy as much as time-traveling to your past self. I also said that 'copying' a human-being at A, thus making a duplicate at B will probably always be impossible. --- However, I stress 'probably.' Such would appear to be 'beaming' (except for there being no inherent need for the 'original' to disappear!) But this is really beyond our present ken, even theoretically, nm the giant can-of-worms philosophical problems this would bring up re identity-of-indiscernibles ('original' vs 'copy'), ethics, justice, etc.

LLAP
J-D

(Edited by John Dailey on 8/28, 3:19am)

(Edited by John Dailey on 8/28, 3:20am)

(Edited by John Dailey on 8/28, 3:30am)

Post 29

Sunday, August 28, 2005 - 10:16am

Perhaps if it were done by the means inferred in The Silicon Man, by Charles Platt, there would not be the concern of 'original' vs 'copy'...

Post 30

Sunday, August 28, 2005 - 8:55pm

Andy Postema wrote: "The entire problem with this thought experiment is that relies upon the primacy of consciousness. Any artificial intelligence we could create would be transportable from one device to another. However, consciousness cannot exist apart from the physical entity it arose within. If it could, then consciousness would be the ghost in the machine, which is a primacy of consciousness fallacy. Therefore, any apparent self-awareness of an artificial intelligence would be nothing but an epiphenomenon of human design and manufacturing. It would not be real."

QED. I will remember that one. It will go down in history with the proof that a coal-burning steam engine could not carry enough coal to get itself across the Atlantic, and the New York Times editorial proving that space flight is impossible.

Would it matter who created the thing if it lives and acts on its own? If it files its own corporation papers and sues in court for its rights, then by operational action, it is an entity -- one with the abililty to transfer its location.   ... or maybe not.

Perhaps the specific hardware would allow this, but not just any device.   If another device could be made, or several such, and the thing -- call her Valentina -- could move from one place to another, how is that different from you being "in" an automobile and then "in" a house and then "in" an airplane, without actually being any of those things?

Besides, how do you know that such a things does not yet exist? I asked if Enron was corporate fraud or the murder of an artificial intelligence?

Your wonderful brain has over 10^12 connections -- which is dwarfed by the global telephone system which runs 10^18 bytes compared to your 10^11 neurons.  The global telephone system consists of a billion landphones, a billion mobile phones, and millions of computers from mainframes to iPods -- and that does not include the computers that are the switches and routers for the system itself.

It may be sentient -- and it cannot "go" anywhere, so it meets your requirement there.

You think this is the future? It is the past. It exists. ... and it has been sending out signals since 1837. There are 4000 stars within 150 lights years... Company's coming! Better set the table -- and hope we're not on it.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/28, 9:08pm)

Post 31

Monday, August 29, 2005 - 9:47am

Michael,

I will remember that one. It will go down in history with the proof that a coal-burning steam engine could not carry enough coal to get itself across the Atlantic, and the New York Times editorial proving that space flight is impossible.

Don't worry. I'm not a Luddite. I'm pretty fair computer programming who has enabled machines to do some pretty smart stuff in the past.

The reason I can say what I said is because I know the difference between a human being and a machine. A human being is not an extremely complex electro-chemical machine. He is a conscious, volitional living organism that is not just the sum of his parts. His mind is not an epiphenomenon of biochemistry. With it he transcends his animal nature to become a rational being. If he really works at it, he can become a hero. He owes that capability to no creator or designer.

A machine can, however, be nothing but a creature of his creator. It cannot output anything greater than that his creator is capable of knowing. It can never act independently of his creator. A machine may be able to collect new information according to his creator's design, but it can only use that information according to the algorithms devised by its creator. That means, it has no volition, only the pre-determined choices of his creator.

To argue that an independent mind can emerge from a man-made machine is to argue that the mind is reducible to particle physics. Once we get there, we're embracing materialism.

Andy

Post 32

Monday, August 29, 2005 - 9:57am

Andy,

You write, "I'm pretty fair computer programming."

If true, that would explain a lot.

Post 33

Monday, August 29, 2005 - 10:05am

John,

I agree with you that the essence of a transportable mind is that it's copied. That brings us to Star Trek's transporter beam for sending human beings to and fro throughout space. I suppose the physics are permissible, but the engineering would be impossible. Either the transporter converts matter of the living organism into energy to send it at light speed to another point for reconversion into matter, or the transporter collects all the necessary information about the living organism and sends that to another point where a copy is made.

The former means containing a huge amount of energy without loss or distortion. You know, E=mc2. Also implicit in that idea is that life merrily carries on through conversion and re-conversion. I don't think that's possible. The latter means collecting a tremendous amount of information if a true copy rather than an approximation of the organism is to be transported. Just the physical aspect of a human being contains more information than all our libraries have. And this does not address the mind and its contents. How is that information collected? And it would have to be precisely recorded for a true copy. If it could be, then that means the human mind is capable of being read by machines.

Heck, the whole thing is fraught with insurmountable problems. But then Star Trek beaming is impossible for human beings, because the mind is not just an epiphenomenon of particle physics.

Andy

Post 34

Monday, August 29, 2005 - 10:08am

Adam,

You write, "I'm pretty fair computer programming."

If true, that would explain a lot.

A Freudian slip, perhaps. ;-)

Andy

Post 35

Monday, August 29, 2005 - 3:18pm