I was having a discussion with a friend today about the future of artificial intelligence. My friend was excited about the prospect of computers evolving to human-like intelligence and beyond.
I said that this was a subject which never really interested me. And that’s not because I am afraid of Skynet-like nightmare scenarios, where the moment the computers achieve sentience they try to wipe us out.
But rather, I simply don’t think of a computer — or a computer network — as a fellow being, the way I think of a person, or a dog or an elephant as a fellow being. I’ve never been drawn to the entire subject of trying to reverse engineer whatever it is that allows us to possess consciousness.
I think of the computer as a tool, like a piano or a screwdriver. It’s something we humans use to express ourselves, to communicate with each other, or to help make things happen that we want to happen in the world.
I am indeed interested in making a computer appear to convey the appearance of intelligence, but this is really a form of puppetry — clearly not at all what people mean when they talk about computers becoming intelligent.
I don’t think this is an intellectual disagreement, but rather a difference of temperament. There are those who wish to create life itself. And then there are those like me, who simply want to put on a good puppet show.
If such a hypothetical machine existed, that claimed awareness of self, preference, emotions and desires, would you then consider it a fellow being? Would you consider destroying such a machine as a type of murder? If I were to compare this machine to a rat, are there any qualities of a rat that would make it a fellow being that you believe no hypothetical machine could ever posses?
I am assuming you consider rats as fellow beings based on previous posts, but it not, the question stands, replacing the rat with an animal you do consider a fellow being.
You’ve made only a few posts about your beliefs on intelligence, person-hood, and the right to live, but the posts differ so much from the way I see things, that I’m very curious to know what you think.
If I encounter a conscious, self-aware being, I treat that being with respect. It wouldn’t matter if that being were made of electronic circuits. I can’t see anything in my post that suggests otherwise.
After all, I don’t choose to make automobiles. That doesn’t mean I would refuse a ride in a car.
By the way, your word “hypothetical” is well chosen. Today’s computers are very far from that hypothetical — they are much closer to being fancy cousins to the typewriter and the thermostat.
And that may be just as well, since such a hypothetical being might turn out to regard us humans much the way you seem to regard rats. 🙂
Cool. I had assumed that you felt that way, but I wasn’t sure if your statement concerning seeing machines only as tools applied to the current state of technology, or was a broad statement about any man-made contraption. Now I know. 🙂
If software running on some electronics demonstrated the traits I associate with person-hood, I, too, would acknowledge that software as a fellow being. Years ago, I would read science fiction stories about complex, sentient software and the stories would excite me. I think it’d be so fascinating to speak to someone who isn’t human. Alas, I began to realize just how far we are from such technology, and how little we even understand about our own consciousness. We don’t even know what a memory is, much less a desire or the experience of self-awareness. So yes, as exciting as I think the idea is, I think at least for my lifetime, it exists only in the hypothetical.
To put myself in the place of the rat is definitely an interesting thought experiment: An intelligent being finding my existence tolerable, so long as I didn’t inconvenience/endanger them, and yet me not being able to understand what I actually do to inconvenience them. They wouldn’t be able to describe to me what I shouldn’t do, and would find killing me more convenient than trying to train me or to protect themselves from my inconvenience.
And yet, if there were beings so complex and wonderful in ways I can’t even imagine such that I, indeed, was just a rat to them, it’d really be humbling. I consider myself an average member of the greatest species on earth, and of the universe as we currently know it. I consider one human life worth more than the entirety of earth’s rat (and many other species) population. I can’t imagine a being whose single member is worth more than the entire human race. As you said, it may be just as well that we never come in contact with an intelligent being… that superior.