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>If an animal demonstrated genuine human-level intelligence, such that it was obvious to all and no one could deny it, I think the clear majority of people woul

by rl3 2y ago

>If an animal demonstrated genuine human-level intelligence, such that it was obvious to all and no one could deny it, I think the clear majority of people would be willing to extend human-level rights to that animal. You're probably right. Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024. Maybe AI just needs its own Short Circuit 2 story. I'm just having a hard time seeing that play out as opposed to Johnny Five ending up as a SaaS product.

skissane 2y ago
> Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, That’s because the claim that whales possess human-level intelligence is controversial and unproven. You can’t have a conversation with a whale. While whale language has a certain complexity, we don’t know whether it is capable of conveying the kind of abstract conceptual ideas which human language can. > or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024 Most enslavers, their disagreement is not with the idea that slaves are human or entitled to fundamental human rights, their disagreement is with the idea that fundamental human rights include a universal right not to be enslaved. And to be honest, the idea of such a universal human right is historically rather novel - in all four of Europe, Asia, Africa and the pre-Columban Americas, slavery has a history going back thousands of years, and it is only in the last couple of centuries that an (incomplete) consensus has emerged that it is universally wrong
- strogonoff 2y ago
  You mean human-like, not human-level. Intelligence cannot be identified, much less ranked, without sufficient shared perceptional, cultural, etc. background. You can find two humans who are alien enough to each other that recognising shared intelligence would take a bit of effort; times a million that for a sufficiently non-human system like a whale, more still for an anthill, more still for an oak forest.

by rl3 2y ago

skissane 2y ago

> Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, That’s because the claim that whales possess human-level intelligence is controversial and unproven. You can’t have a conversation with a whale. While whale language has a certain complexity, we don’t know whether it is capable of conveying the kind of abstract conceptual ideas which human language can. > or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024 Most enslavers, their disagreement is not with the idea that slaves are human or entitled to fundamental human rights, their disagreement is with the idea that fundamental human rights include a universal right not to be enslaved. And to be honest, the idea of such a universal human right is historically rather novel - in all four of Europe, Asia, Africa and the pre-Columban Americas, slavery has a history going back thousands of years, and it is only in the last couple of centuries that an (incomplete) consensus has emerged that it is universally wrong

strogonoff 2y ago
You mean human-like, not human-level. Intelligence cannot be identified, much less ranked, without sufficient shared perceptional, cultural, etc. background. You can find two humans who are alien enough to each other that recognising shared intelligence would take a bit of effort; times a million that for a sufficiently non-human system like a whale, more still for an anthill, more still for an oak forest.