PureBasic Forums - English

Thorium wrote:If true AI is discovered and programs/maschines can think

That's a fallacy. Anything that is artificial, by very definition, simply cannot think -- now or ever. It's just using a sophisticated program to emulate thought. That doesn't make it real or be eligible to receive rights. As Zach said, pull the plug and it's just a hunk of machinery again, no different to your toaster. Not a life. Some humans, however, have no intelligence of their own and simply decide to give rights to the machines because they assume it's truly thinking. These same humans are fooled by apps like Eliza or even Siri on the iPhone. They have my sympathies.

MachineCode wrote:

Thorium wrote:If true AI is discovered and programs/maschines can think

That's a fallacy. Anything that is artificial, by very definition, simply cannot think -- now or ever. It's just using a sophisticated program to emulate thought. That doesn't make it real or be eligible to receive rights. As Zach said, pull the plug and it's just a hunk of machinery again, no different to your toaster. Not a life. Some humans, however, have no intelligence of their own and simply decide to give rights to the machines because they assume it's truly thinking. These same humans are fooled by apps like Eliza or even Siri on the iPhone. They have my sympathies.

How is your brain different to a machine?
Why shouldnt is be possible to create a program with the ability of true thoughts? Your brain is just a biological machine. Your thoughts are just electric impulses. If i pull your plug, you are just a drolling machine as well. If your brain dosnt work anymore your body is simple a machine doing nothing. Again why shouldnt it be possible to create a program like the brain?

Thorium wrote:How is your brain different to a machine?

Because it's a living organism that functions and grows without being plugged into any external power source, and it can learn things without external programming, and even invent things and concepts by itself. But I didn't really need to explain that, did I?

MachineCode wrote:

Thorium wrote:How is your brain different to a machine?

Because it's a living organism that functions and grows without being plugged into any external power source, and it can learn things without external programming

No it cant.
You will die without consuming energy through eating. Also you will lern nothing without input from the world around you and without that you will not be able to be creative. Creativity is allways only a new way of combining things we have lerned.
This can all be done by a program as well. I still dont see any proof that a true AI is impossible.

Thorium wrote:You will die without consuming energy through eating

I said you don't need to plugged into anything to function. Deny me food and a PC power, and see who functions longer.

Thorium wrote:you will lern nothing without input from the world around you

Tell that to Helen Keller. She learnt plenty and was quite creative, despite being both 100% deaf and blind since birth.

Thorium wrote:Creativity is allways only a new way of combining things we have lerned

Some people create things that they have never been exposed to before. Please explain how.

MachineCode wrote:

Thorium wrote:you will lern nothing without input from the world around you

Tell that to Helen Keller. She learnt plenty and was quite creative, despite being both 100% deaf and blind since birth.

Wikipedia wrote:Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington,[11] the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.

Just correcting you over the since birth bit .

Okay, so she couldn't see/hear from 2 years old, but she still learned and achieved a lot in her life despite her lack of external input. A computer, by comparison with no external input, would store nothing on its hard drives...

Now, get behind me, Satan!

The question was: Do HUMANS build machines and give rights to them (would be very silly in my opinion),
or do HUMANS build machines with a power plug that HUMANS control?
This robots are slaves. Even if they look real, they are machines build by humans. So why would you
want to give a machine any rights, while you eat other animals (real living beings) every day?

MachineCode wrote:Now, get behind me, Satan!

no... Your ass is too hairy

It's seems to transform into sort of a creationism debate.

[quote=demivec]Governments and organized societies can give legal standing to animals or 'things' if they want to but it doesn't make any sense if someone has to speak for them. If someone is speaking for them then it is really the speaker that has the legal standing and not the animal or the object.[/quote]I agree with you. In fact, if tomorrow sun is destroying Earth, it gives itself (himself, if you're seeing it is a divinity) the right to do it. And we couldn't do anything. So, an 'object' (for people believing it's an object) have rights.

Talking about IA, it would certainly takes age to create such a thing. Simulating brain is something incredibly difficult, as brain is analogic, billions of neurons with enormous amount of dynamic connections between them. But we are able to do thinner chips and larger brains than nature. So... Maybe a day.

Thorium wrote:Human rights are not god given. Maybe for religious people. But in reality human rights are given to humanity by humans. They thought of them and they wrote them down and they enforce them.
I dont want to offend any religious people, i do respect most religions. But you have to agree that human rights was been invented by humans to ensure a working society.
We decide what or who gets rights. And we do that to make a peacefull society possible.

I disagree about your assertion that humans invented rights. I would state that humans were given rights (by God) and can only act to allow or disallow the expression of those rights by others. To put it another way, human societies can limit the expression of god-given rights but are unable to expand those rights. The concept of god-given rights is one that is expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence as "self-evident" and the rights as "unalienable".

djes wrote:I agree with you. In fact, if tomorrow sun is destroying Earth, it gives itself (himself, if you're seeing it is a divinity) the right to do it. And we couldn't do anything. So, an 'object' (for people believing it's an object) have rights.

Well, to state it from my perspective, the Earth and the Sun belong to Him who created them. They have whatever rights he gives them.

djes wrote:It's seems to transform into sort of a creationism debate.

I would rather not have that debate and so will limit any further comments I have to instead focus more on the related thread topic about rights for robots or other animate machines.


Some would say robots are slaves, I say they are tools. A tool does whatever the user of the tool dictates (according to the inherent limitations of the tool). Similar to what I stated previously, because the tool is under the control of a person it is the person who bears responsibility for what the tool does or does not do. There are no rights that can be extended to the tool that are not wholly in the possession of the one who controls the tool.

On the point of AI and whether that is meaningful in some way, I don't think it is. Intelligence involves using information and patterns of information to arrive at conclusions and make decisions. AI can model many aspects of intelligence only as well as we understand it ourselves. That means AI is always less intelligent than we are (and depending on who we are that can be a very limiting statement ).

I do not think a robust or strong AI will ever be accomplished. The best that has ever been accomplished (according to my knowledge) is a very narrow step-wise rule following or simple information regurgitation.

Machines are tools now. But what if they evolve into something more? What if they get needs and wants, and what if they start to express them? If we then treat them as tools, they are slaves by definition.

Demivec wrote: I disagree about your assertion that humans invented rights. I would state that humans were given rights (by God) and can only act to allow or disallow the expression of those rights by others. To put it another way, human societies can limit the expression of god-given rights but are unable to expand those rights. The concept of god-given rights is one that is expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence as "self-evident" and the rights as "unalienable".

I dont know any expression handed down by god to us about human rights.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence was been written by humans and i am pretty sure god didnt tell them what they should write down. More likly they used god to get people to agree to the same ideas.

Thorium wrote:Machines are tools now. But what if they evolve into something more? What if they get needs and wants, and what if they start to express them? If we then treat them as tools, they are slaves by definition.

If they are tools then they are tools by definition.

Thorium wrote:

Demivec wrote: I disagree about your assertion that humans invented rights. I would state that humans were given rights (by God) and can only act to allow or disallow the expression of those rights by others. To put it another way, human societies can limit the expression of god-given rights but are unable to expand those rights. The concept of god-given rights is one that is expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence as "self-evident" and the rights as "unalienable".

I dont know any expression handed down by god to us about human rights.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence was been written by humans and i am pretty sure god didnt tell them what they should write down. More likly they used god to get people to agree to the same ideas.

I agree the U.S. Declaration of Independence was written by humans. And I agree that if you think there are not god-given rights you would be left to the conclusion that the only rights you have are those that someone 'allowed' you to have. This line of reasoning would justify many ideas such as slavery or saying that individuals exist only because of the will and pleasure of government. Which is harder to agree to, that you are only allowed rights because someone was nice enough to allow you those rights (and hopefully not revoke them at some future time) or that everyone has rights that are god-given and belong to everyone equally and that one can not be separated from?

I would answer you at length regarding your statement, "I dont know any expression handed down by god to us about human rights.", but I will forego this because I do not think anyone would want such things posted here.

I think at this point I can not add much more to the discussion of 'rights for robots' or any other non-living entity. Everything depends on statements such as 'if they evolve', 'if they get needs and wants', and 'if they start to express their needs and wants'. That's a lot of if's that I don't see ever happening. I can wait till they happen before I worry about how to handle them.

One issue I have is how people think the human brain is like a computer. Just because we made computers, we think the brain acts like them. Do we really have the audacity and arrogance to think we can create something as amazing as the human brain? No, I put forth the idea that a computer, while it emulates some things that a brain can do, is in no way like a real brain at all. A radio can play a song, but does that mean the device is actually singing? Of course not. Same deal. Think about it. (Which is something a computer or machine can never do).

We mimics nature. I don't know if god exists, or something like a super civilisation doing an experiment with what we call atoms and moleculs, or even universe. I just know that in this universe as I (think I) know it, we are able to create things, animated things, acting. Isn't it the definition of an entity ? What is the definition of intelligence ? In fact, in IQ tests, something moving has not a 0 IQ. So, if rights apply to intelligent entities, a leaf flying in the wind has rights