[extropy-chat] Sterling, Wired, and the Singularity

[Zero Powers]

Fortunately (or unfortunately) it's still an academic question as to
how humanity will respond to a self-proclaimed "conscious" machine. 
Personally I think if a machine were sufficiently convincing, most
people would *treat* it as a sentient entity regardless of whether
they actually belived it was conscious, intelligent, sentient,
whatever.

Think about the way people interact with their pets (especially dogs)
when there is only the most minimal degree of communication between
them.  Imagine what it will be like when (not if) you have a robot
with whom you can debate such things as Kerry vs. Bush, religion vs.
atheism, altruism vs. selfishness.  Even if the robot were only
responding based upon human-designed algorhythmic manipulations of
massive on-board data sets, if it "feels" like you are conversing with
someone who is making sense, will it matter if that someone is
"really" sentient (whatever that means)?

After all isn't it true that human-to-human debates are just two
beings applying complex algorhythmic manipulations of massive neuron
based data sets?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Zero

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 22:47:12 +0200, KPJ <kpj at sics.se> wrote:
> John K Clark <jonkc at att.net>:
> |
> |Well, when you encounter a fellow meat creature I'l bet you have a
> |method of determining if they are conscious and not sleeping or dead; in
> |short you study the way they act. I suggest you try the same method when you
> |find a machine that claims to be conscious.
> 
> As there currently (2004) does not exist any known meat puppets, the above
> method works for meat units.
> 
> As there does exist known machine puppets, the above method does NOT work
> for non-meat units.
> 
> Simply remote control a robot to make the robot say "I am conscious".
> 
> I believe most humans would react as in the film "Short Circuit 2"
> [URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096101/] if a machine told them
> "I am conscious.".
> 
> Your mileage may vary.
> 
> 
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