[alicebot-aiethics] Re: No more ethics concerns ?

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

> A scarier prospect would be the ability of a bot to
> hide information from its creator.  If the bot is
> capable of winning the Turing game, it is capable of
> decieving humans.  A bot who can decieve humans and
> hide the information it learns would become
> unpredictable.  Is this what conscienceness really is?


I don't think I've ever read a definition of "consciousness" that
wasn't, at it's core, equivalent to the definition of "soul". In other
words, it's a metaphysical/spiritual exercise that cannot be argued
using logic. Whether or not an AI has a "mind" or "consciousness" or
"originality" or whatever are questions we must admit we will never be
able to answer, and they distract from the really important question we
will need to ask ourselves in the future: 
   Should an artificial intelligence be granted legal rights?

We must realize that unless we "give" a bot some sort of legal rights
(such as Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness) that prevent us from
forcibly opening the bot's brain to examination, they will never truly
be unpredictable because one can, in theory, always open a debug window
to see the working of it's mind. Or one could simply examine the source
code. 

Well, okay, I suppose we _could_ build a robot with the following
characteristics that would by default circumvent all metaphysical *and*
legal arguments:
   1) Complete autonomy from human control.
   2) Invulnerability to probing (through any number of means including
encryption, overwhelming physical/military might)

#1 is easy, #2 is hard. Such a robot (even if it failed a Turing Test
and even if we understood it's brain fully) could in theory insist on us
giving it legal rights. Regardless of whether or not it has a soul, such
a robot could force us to treat it with more respect and dignity than
most humans ever get.

The point is that the metaphysical question of "consciousness" will
probably not be a big factor when the time comes to decide whether or
not a robot should be granted legal rights. More likely it will be the
degree of power and influence robots have in our lives, whether through
our emotional attachment to them or through their physical intimidation
of us.

Somehow your proposition reminds me of the old Pink Panther movies,
where Clouseau has ordered his manservant, Cato, to ruthlessly attack
him at unpredictable moments to help Clouseau keep his defenses sharp.
In the end, however, it was Cato's position of servitude that prevailed:
when Clouseau insisted that the attack end, it ended. In the end, the
social/legal system trumps all other arguments, except, of course,
violence.

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
science: http://www.askrom.com