Thetownend.com

...should they get the same rights as humans?

Discuss

depends on what rules they have built in to them. but as a machine they should treated as such. Their emotion is simulated and not real.

But in a way aren't our emotions and feelings a product of our environment? You could in effect get a robot which 'learns' emotion in the same way as humans do.

 You've been watching Artificial Intelligence haven't you. 

still not 'life' though is it.

Or Bicentennial Man

IT?

I just removed it as it didn't make any sense.

I was trying to say it stops being AI, as there is nothing artificial about its intelligence.

Fuck knows where I got IT from

too many its.....arrrggggghhhh

  Robots etc...will only get rights if they fight for them....after all slavery is still abroad in the world...just ask Septic Bladder and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Nope. I was just bored.


If the machines have the same sentient abilities as humans (learning in reaction to environment, emotional response to environment, etc.), can you define it as "not life" because of how it works?

What if the machines are built out of organic matter. Not bits stolen from current living entities like cyborgs, but the usage of similar materials that make humans work?

you mean Cuntiano RoDildo?

if they are made of natural materials (although i still don't understand what is technically not natural as everything on the planet is surely natural if you go down to its base elements) then the argument becomes clouded. At what point do rights kick in? is there an IQ test? if so i fear for the residents of (insert most hated town here).

 Nah....Clitianal Bumdildo

So if everything is "natural" why does it matter if they are built out of some sort of organic machinery, standard current style electronic cleverness, a weird sort of quantum computing soup, or a mixture of all three? Surely the abilities shown are more important in determining an entities claim to life, and not its technical make up.

the argument is more down to the fact that it is man made i.e. would not have happened without us building it. But in these days of GM etc it is a murky argument.

Any such development in living machines would probably go alongside a greater understanding of the way our own minds work anyway. I guess things will get less murky as traditionally separate branches of science merge into new areas of study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATFxVB4JFpQ

Ace. I watched all of the Flight of the Concords tv series thingy this weekend. I didn't like it to start off with but it grew on me.

nighty night thread announced.

I think I'm going to enjoy sleeping tonight. Too many sofas and floors have taken their toll.

i've stopped coughing for the last hour thank fuck. bloody man flu.

and family guy is on, which is the bestest.

I used to like family guy. Then I got bored of it and stopped watching it. I've started watching it again a bit recently and started liking it again.

Mental.

that's one crazy story.

Sentient robot doctors would cure man flu.

Those bastards.

it's either that or covonia

I tried some 2,000,000 Scoville hot sauce stuff this weekend. I only had a bit spread on a cocktail stick. That stuff could cure aids.

i've tried some mental stuff before, the type of thing that makes a whole 6 person chili hot with one drop.

Went down well with a few pints of Ghandi's flip flop. I did completely destroy one of the cider festival toilet cubicles. It was there own fault for mixing a chilli sauce and delicious apple based alcoholic beverages.

I love taking a massive dump when there's a queue. The word dump doesn't really fit though. This was more of a rancid liquid spray. I don't think my diet of cheese for the last 2 days helped much either.

That's a post I really would rather have not read.

Such things only make you stronger.

hmmmm.

evening all

On a more pleasant note, I just got around to watching cox's goal against fenerbanchethingy on youtube. I haven't got around to reading all the posts I missed and probably won't, but I'd noticed a few mentions of it and another mate kept telling me to watch it.

Not bad. 6/10.

Alan Turing had an answer to this question back in the 50's. He suggested a test where:

"Suppose that we have a person, a machine, and an interrogator. The interrogator is in a room separated from the other person and the machine. The object of the game is for the interrogator to determine which of the other two is the person, and which is the machine. The interrogator knows the other person and the machine by the labels ‘X’ and ‘Y’—but, at least at the beginning of the game, does not know which of the other person and the machine is ‘X’—and at the end of the game says either ‘X is the person and Y is the machine’ or ‘X is the machine and Y is the person’. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to the person and the machine of the following kind: “Will X please tell me whether X plays chess?” Whichever of the machine and the other person is X must answer questions that are addressed to X. The object of the machine is to try to cause the interrogator to mistakenly conclude that the machine is the other person; the object of the other person is to try to help the interrogator to correctly identify the machine."

If a machine can repeatedly pass this kind of interrogation with no more than a 70% chance of being correctly identified then it can reasonably be thought to be intelligent.

It's called the Turing Test and pops up a lot in science fiction, (including that interview in Blade Runner where Harrison Ford realises that Sean Young is a replicant but fancies her so ignores it).

I think it's fair enough. If something acts in every way as if it is intelligent, to such an extent that we can't tell the difference between it and a naturally created intelligent being, then surely its only right to treat it in the same way we would anyone else.

After all we all treat other people as if they are intelligent sentient beings because we percieve that they act as if they are. We've no other way way of knowing.

That's possibly the nerdiest post I've ever made. :D

And oh nice to have you back Benny I was starting to get worried about you.

Ahh the old Turing Test. I had to write some fairly interesting essays on such things a long time ago. The Chinese Room thought experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room) is a nice bit of related craziness. I always liked to think of a schizophrenic mind within a mind, although I know that's not really the idea of it.

Interesting stuff, not heard of it before but then I'm not a sci-fi kinda guy.