[extropy-chat] MP3000s

[Mark Walker]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kevinfreels.com" <

>Well of course, the whole star wars saga is full of them. Of course, people 
>can be had as slaves as well. >

Well, the worry is that human-level robots are persons as well, unless you 
mean by 'person' that persons are necessarily biological beings. It may be 
that in the Star Wars saga they do not discriminate against human-level 
intelligent robots because humans can be slaves as well. But are own 
reaction to the movies is interesting. I wonder how we would feel about Luke 
Skywalker in the first movie (Episode III) if he and his family were buying 
human slaves rather than robot slaves? My guess is that our reaction would 
be quite different, which shows our prejudice: our substratism. I hope 
people think this through morally before people invest a huge amount of 
money in developing AI. That is, there may well be an expectation that 
developing human level AI ought to reap some financial benefits, but unless 
we reintroduce slavery it is difficult to see how this will be assured.

Cheers,

Mark

Dr. Mark Walker
Department of Philosophy
University Hall 310
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1
Canada