[ExI] Pope Leo and AI

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2026 at 9:13 AM Simon Quellen Field AB6NY <
simon.field at gmail.com> wrote:

*> Whether the computer program is conscious or not was never the
> question.The question was should we give them emotions, desires, and
> rights.*
>

*If something is conscious and at least as intelligent as a human then I
would maintain it would be immoral not to give it rights; although it
doesn't matter what I maintain. As I said before, the important question of
immediate practical concern is will computers grant us rights? *

*> We are already giving them agency, and that can be dangerous, but with
> desires and their own agenda,*
>

*Yes but "desire" sure sounds like an emotion to me, and if you concede
that a computer is conscious then computer programming could be thought of
as the art of causing the computer to desire some things, like completing a
spreadsheet, and not to desire other things, like wasting computer flops by
engaging in random woolgathering.*

*I don't understand why so many people believe that emotion is much more
difficult to generate than intelligence when Evolution found the exact
opposite to be true. Random mutation and natural selection came up with
emotions like fear and hate (as evidenced by the fight or flight response)
about 500 million years ago, the same time it invented the first brain, and
perhaps even earlier than that, but our species is only about 300,000 years
old and we only managed to make a radio telescope about 100 years ago. *

*Unless Charles Darwin was wrong there is no way natural selection could
have produced consciousness unless it's the inevitable byproduct of
intelligence because natural selection can't select for something that it
can't see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can,
but it can see intelligence. And I know for a fact but natural selection
did manage to produce consciousness at least once, me, and probably many
billions of times. And **I don't think Charles Darwin was wrong. *

* > you should not anthropomorphize them.*


*You don't sound like a crazy person to me so I'm sure you don't believe
you are the only conscious being in the universe, so you must
be anthropomorphizeing your fellow human beings, you believe  they are
conscious and have feelings similar to the way you do, at least when they
are not sleeping or under anesthesia or dead, because when they are in any
of those states they are no longer behaving intelligently.  I can think of
no reason not to use the same procedure regardless if you're judging a
human or a computer. *

*> My dog is conscious. *


*Almost certainly yes, assuming that your dog is not sleeping or under
anesthesia or dead.*

*> My dog is conscious *


*Your dog is not nearly as intelligent as you are so it doesn't matter if
you give him the right to vote or not because even if you did he wouldn't
know how to actually vote. If your dog was much more intelligent than you
then it STILL wouldn't matter if you gave him the right to vote or not
because he would find a way to vote whether you like it or not.  *


*John K Clark*




>
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