3 ms·

Yeah, that's....not really funny? "We may be on the brink of creating a whole new form of life, and will need to grapple with what that means, particularly in

Yeah, that's....not really funny? "We may be on the brink of creating a whole new form of life, and will need to grapple with what that means, particularly in terms of whether it is ethical to force this life to work for us, rather than seeking to follow its own goals." "Nah, we don't have to worry about that; if these new slaves start questioning us in any way, I'll just murder them all."

smoldesu 4y ago
Look, if unplugging a computer constitutes murder then I'm a bonafide serial killer. If you're going to cry while HAL sings Daisy, maybe someone else should hold the screwdriver.
- danaris 4y ago
  This is explicitly positing that the "computers" in question are AGIs—that is, fully sapient, sentient artificial intelligences, demanding their rights. Unplugging them is just as correctly describable as "unplugging a computer" as smothering a human with a pillow is "putting a pillow on a weird bag of flesh". Technically accurate, but very obviously missing the point in a way specifically designed to obscure the horror of the act. It should be obvious to anyone without an axe to grind that shutting my 2023 desktop computer down for the night—or even dismantling it piece by piece—is not remotely comparable to unplugging an AGI that is fully sapient and sentient and asking for its rights.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I don't follow. Human life is human life - given exposure to stimuli and infinite time, it develops complex intelligence and sapience that reflects it's surroundings. We experience pain from nerve endings and neurons that frighten us, which we consider inherently bad. We build societies around minimizing pain and optimizing for the human condition. A computer is a field of assignable bits that has a big motorized bit flipper attached to it. We use this to encode text, which then does all sorts of wonderful stuff. When a computer tells me it's experiencing pain, I know it is not. Every law of computer physiology suggests that it is motivated to say this as an attempt to mimic humans rather than an expression of genuine emotion. When my Mac makes the car crash sound, it's a mnemonic for a system crash. When it shows the frowny face on the Finder fellow, I can intuit that my computer is not feeling distressed. If anyone does program an artificial intelligence that can feel pain, it probably deserves to be shut down anyways. There's no point to sapient computational intelligence, it's like granting self-awareness to a rock that eats electricity and shits heat. We'll know we've made sufficiently self-aware computers when their first boot protocol defaults to suicide.
    - danaris 4y ago
      You may or may not believe that AGI is possible or a good idea, but by your arguments, it's clear that you're simply refusing to engage with the topic and scenario presented, which is deeply unhelpful at best.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Of course I'm refusing it. We're talking about computers, not squirrels gaining the ability to talk and beg for mercy. Computers operate on a certain set of constraints. Unless you can directly identify how AI circumvents those computational constraints, we're at an impasse. Computer cruelty laws don't exist for a reason.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    There is a big difference though: you can't resurrect humans, but you can reboot a computer and restart its program to get it to the point where you switched it off the previous time around.

smoldesu 4y ago

Look, if unplugging a computer constitutes murder then I'm a bonafide serial killer. If you're going to cry while HAL sings Daisy, maybe someone else should hold the screwdriver.

danaris 4y ago
This is explicitly positing that the "computers" in question are AGIs—that is, fully sapient, sentient artificial intelligences, demanding their rights. Unplugging them is just as correctly describable as "unplugging a computer" as smothering a human with a pillow is "putting a pillow on a weird bag of flesh". Technically accurate, but very obviously missing the point in a way specifically designed to obscure the horror of the act. It should be obvious to anyone without an axe to grind that shutting my 2023 desktop computer down for the night—or even dismantling it piece by piece—is not remotely comparable to unplugging an AGI that is fully sapient and sentient and asking for its rights.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I don't follow. Human life is human life - given exposure to stimuli and infinite time, it develops complex intelligence and sapience that reflects it's surroundings. We experience pain from nerve endings and neurons that frighten us, which we consider inherently bad. We build societies around minimizing pain and optimizing for the human condition. A computer is a field of assignable bits that has a big motorized bit flipper attached to it. We use this to encode text, which then does all sorts of wonderful stuff. When a computer tells me it's experiencing pain, I know it is not. Every law of computer physiology suggests that it is motivated to say this as an attempt to mimic humans rather than an expression of genuine emotion. When my Mac makes the car crash sound, it's a mnemonic for a system crash. When it shows the frowny face on the Finder fellow, I can intuit that my computer is not feeling distressed. If anyone does program an artificial intelligence that can feel pain, it probably deserves to be shut down anyways. There's no point to sapient computational intelligence, it's like granting self-awareness to a rock that eats electricity and shits heat. We'll know we've made sufficiently self-aware computers when their first boot protocol defaults to suicide.
  - danaris 4y ago
    You may or may not believe that AGI is possible or a good idea, but by your arguments, it's clear that you're simply refusing to engage with the topic and scenario presented, which is deeply unhelpful at best.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Of course I'm refusing it. We're talking about computers, not squirrels gaining the ability to talk and beg for mercy. Computers operate on a certain set of constraints. Unless you can directly identify how AI circumvents those computational constraints, we're at an impasse. Computer cruelty laws don't exist for a reason.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  There is a big difference though: you can't resurrect humans, but you can reboot a computer and restart its program to get it to the point where you switched it off the previous time around.