The AI Thread

[El_Machinae]

Slavery is indefensible because humans aren't artificial constructs built on an assembly line. Subjecting machines to similar conditions, even if they are intelligent, is okay because at the end of the day they are still built to be our tools.

I would even argue that non-sapient animal life is more deserving of rights and protections than a sapient machine.

"Made on purpose to serve" isn't a good qualifier, honestly. If I get my wife pregnant while intending to make the offspring a slave, then that kid was only built to be my tool. We disallow slavery because of sapience, because we value the human mind over all other things.

There's no metaphysical difference between intentionally creating a child and intentionally creating a robot, the 'intent to create' is the same. The only difference is sapience.

Fun fact: a variant of your argument was used to justify slavery. "Those kids wouldn't be here if we'd not intentionally bred our slave stock". And it's not just the autonomy of the initial slaves that matter. If I were to create a sapient AI using slaves, non-sapient AI, or employees, its moral status would be the same.

 

[innonimatu]

"Made on purpose to serve" isn't a good qualifier, honestly. If I get my wife pregnant while intending to make the offspring a slave, then that kid was only built to be my tool. We disallow slavery because of sapience, because we value the human mind over all other things.

There's no metaphysical difference between intentionally creating a child and intentionally creating a robot, the 'intent to create' is the same. The only difference is sapience.

Fun fact: a variant of your argument was used to justify slavery. "Those kids wouldn't be here if we'd not intentionally bred our slave stock". And it's not just the autonomy of the initial slaves that matter. If I were to create a sapient AI using slaves, non-sapient AI, or employees, its moral status would be the same.

I think you misunderstood the argument, and are misrepresenting it. @Commodore wasn't taking about a human, he was talking about humans as a kind, a category, versus robots as a different category. Hence your example of a human child doesn't apply: any human child cannot be part of a group of things crated as tools, rather is part of the group of beings that, among other things, create tools. It's a fundamental difference of category, and the attributes of each category. You can't argue against it by trying to claim a member of one category is a member of the other category, that's a false argument. A child cannot be "built to be a tool", first because it's not "built", second because humans as a species (as a category) have not been created by any external power to be tools. Robots indeed are built, and are created with that purpose.

 

[El_Machinae]

"built to be a tool" is a function of the intent of the builder. "Built" is a action where someone arranges nature to makes something they want. "Tool" is whether you use the object for utility.
There's the ability to waffle on the heuristic, insisting the "building" and "growing" are categorically different. That's kind of nonsense, since both just require arranging matter with intent. Letting clay bake in a kiln is just taking advantage of the properties of clay and growing a seed into a shade-tree is going to be the same idea again. The creator decides what something is for when they make it.

I could grow a fetus and use it as a doorstop. If people are insisting that "build" vs "grow" is significantly different, it just doesn't work. Sapient AI could easily come from evolutionary algorithms, where they're not 'built' but merely allowed to grow in an ecosystem designed for them.

We only care about the sentience of a human. This is why we keep the identical twin but toss the placenta. Both are just descended from the original embryo, but we keep the one with the brain. Commodore's stance basically locks him in to violent rebellion, since the logic is circular. Same with ending slavery. Same with women's suffrage. The premise of "this entity will never be sufficiently like me to deserve right because of Excuse X" has thousands of years of history of making the world a worse place.

 

[Kyriakos]

"built to be a tool" is a function of the intent of the builder. "Built" is a action where someone arranges nature to makes something they want. "Tool" is whether you use the object for utility.
There's the ability to waffle on the heuristic, insisting the "building" and "growing" are categorically different. That's kind of nonsense, since both just require arranging matter with intent. Letting clay bake in a kiln is just taking advantage of the properties of clay and growing a seed into a shade-tree is going to be the same idea again. The creator decides what something is for when they make it.

I could grow a fetus and use it as a doorstop. If people are insisting that "build" vs "grow" is significantly different, it just doesn't work. Sapient AI could easily come from evolutionary algorithms, where they're not 'built' but merely allowed to grow in an ecosystem designed for them.

We only care about the sentience of a human. This is why we keep the identical twin but toss the placenta. Both are just descended from the original embryo, but we keep the one with the brain. Commodore's stance basically locks him in to violent rebellion, since the logic is circular. Same with ending slavery. Same with women's suffrage. The premise of "this entity will never be sufficiently like me to deserve right because of Excuse X" has thousands of years of history of making the world a worse place.

It's not like anyone creates a child. To claim the child is a creation to be attributed to the parents would be as ridiculous as to claim that if one presses a button which causes a billion people to work in factories to produce X, then the person pushing the button is the creator of X.

Perhaps another parallel would be to claim that you yourself are the creator of your digestive system, just cause you know some foods which don't kill you on the spot.

 

[red_elk]

To claim the child is a creation to be attributed to the parents would be as ridiculous as to claim that if one presses a button which causes a billion people to work in factories to produce X, then the person pushing the button is the creator of X.

The one who makes a choice to press the button, is a creator. Or destroyer...

 

[Kyriakos]

The one who makes a choice to press the button, is a creator. Or destroyer...

You are the creator of all computer games you started to play?

Most people can create next to nothing of note. Making someone pregnant is a technical issue, available since before even language (let alone civilization) was a thing - for most animals one has to suspect it isn't even a conscious decision. Then again if a baboon was actually able to create baboons, instead of triggering a ready-made routine which creates, she'd be more of a creator than any human scientist in regards to complexity of the creation.

 

[red_elk]

You are the creator of all computer games you started to play?

No, the authors of these games are the creators.

Let's say I wrote a program which generates random map for a computer game. I'm creator of the program (and algorithm, in case if I didn't use already existing one).
The user who presses a button and generates a new map, is the creator of the map. Doesn't mean he is creative or talented, of course.

 

[Kyriakos]

No, the authors of these games are the creators.

Let's say I wrote a program which generates random map for a computer game. I'm creator of the program (and algorithm, in case if I didn't use already existing one).
The user who presses a button and generates a new map, is the creator of the map. Doesn't mean he is creative or talented, of course.

I can see your point, of course, but in this sense a "creator" is indeed not "creative" at all, so salvaging the title of "creator" in this way has the effect of erasing the sense of creation. Besides, even in a game, each player is highly likely - given a relatively small number of games for all players - to play a set of moves which are unique in the games. In your sense this player is still a creator, given the move collection is attributed just to him.

At any rate, we don't even know how to alter dna to change very visible qualities of a person, let alone claim that we know how the human organism is functioning as a whole.
From various videos on AI I get the sense the enthusiasts there think the computer actually does stuff and creates a difference and senses it as well. I still haven't been able to understand how one can claim such a thing. Even the claims some make (as in the Less Wrong article I posted) that perhaps we can use some special/unknown/deeper routine the AI comes up with, are in my view quite strange given one would have to explain how a new routine is to occur in something which runs specific routines already fed to it (including routines for making it come up with new routines) - and then that supposed novel routine would have to be itself notable, which seems highly unlikely.

 

[red_elk]

El_Machinae disagrees that humans are above robots.
red_elk disagrees that humans are above animals.

 

[Joij21]

If a robot is not sapient then I'd say it's okay for it to be a slave. No harm done there.

 

[El_Machinae]

Perhaps another parallel would be to claim that you yourself are the creator of your digestive system, just cause you know some foods which don't kill you on the spot.

You're arguing a heuristic when the important thing (sapient AI) is the outcome.

If I carefully eat a combination of maize and sweet potatoes am I 'growing' poop, 'creating' poop, or 'building' poop? Doesn't matter, really. I'm using my body to intentionally make something. Deciding on inputs because I know what output I want.

What I intend to do with it then determines what it is. Will I dry it to make a doorstop? (a tool) Will I use it to seed my compost bin? (an ingredient) Will I use it to decorate canvas? (art).

People are arguing about the difference between 'growing' and 'building'. It's insignificantly different. You can grow a sapling, you can grow a baby. What you may then do with the maturing organism is a function of sapience not the "intent you decided to grow it for".

 

[Kyriakos]

El Machinae, according to your way of seeing this, you might as well try to impress people claiming you know how to create co2 if you are given oxygen.
Seen in a mathematical way, you can't take credit for a function someone else came up with and was built into your progress. If you use it for an outcome which was needed, then it can be accessed as notable or not, according to how notable the outcome is. The example of an outcome you gave was literally crap.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm not talking Ex Nihilo here. But if you don't think people can autonomously decide to make a baby (or change CO2 output), then you're just wrong.

I certainly do know how to make CO2 when given oxygen. If I had some type of goal that involved producing CO2, I am quite capable of producing it. I can take any exothermic reaction that involves oxidizing carbon and then capture the output. If I make the CO using my lungs, it's just as made as it was.

But, you've convinced me that you have no input into this thread. All you've done is rearrange words that other people have already created. Honestly, you put zero thought into which electrons would transmit the words you've borrowed from predecessors. So, given that you don't understand the process of communication to an artificially determined level of detail, you're right. Ironic, though.

A tool is a tool if it was created to be a tool (or if it was repurposed to be a tool). Whether something has sapience has no bearing as to whether it was 'created to be a tool'.

But, to correct red elk, I don't think robots are above people. I think that we owe moral consideration based on tiers of sentience.

 

[red_elk]

El Machinae, according to your way of seeing this, you might as well try to impress people claiming you know how to create co2 if you are given oxygen.

When you paint a picture, you use your body too. Is that impressiveness of result which is required to consider something an act of creation?
I can paint totally unimpressive picture, by the way.

 

[Kyriakos]

But, you've convinced me that you have no input into this thread. All you've done is rearrange words that other people have already created. Honestly, you put zero thought into which electrons would transmit the words you've borrowed from predecessors. So, given that you don't understand the process of communication to an artificially determined level of detail, you're right. Ironic, though.

What is ironic is that you used an example which displays your own failure to identify the point: while anyone can use words, which indeed were there before him, every human senses those words in a way which isn't given and is the outcome of a vast number of non-conscious calculation as well as fossilized previous thought. Entirely unlikely what current AI does.

 

[Kyriakos]

When you paint a picture, you use your body too. Is that impressiveness of result which is required to consider something an act of creation?
I can paint totally unimpressive picture, by the way.

The degree of creativity is sensibly differentiated when we are talking about a species which is known to be able to create. Furthermore, obviously past some level no one is a fully conscious creator of anything - you can provide a solution to a math problem, but it's not like you created your own mind's ability to provide that solution.

 

[El_Machinae]

"fossilized previous thought" is right, since the discussion was about hypothetical sapient AI and not current AI. I'm not really going to engage in the Kyr "biology is necessary for sentience" rabbit-hole.

 

[Kyriakos]

When you paint a picture, you use your body too. Is that impressiveness of result which is required to consider something an act of creation?
I can paint totally unimpressive picture, by the way.

The degree of creativity is sensibly differentiated when we are talking about a species which is known to be able to create. Furthermore, obviously past some level no one is a fully conscious creator of anything - you can provide a solution to a math problem, but it's not like you created your own mind's ability to provide that solution.

 

[red_elk]

So... your point is machines are created while humans aren't - and therefore should have different rights, just because human body grew as a result of natural processes?
Regardless of how intelligent AI is? Seems very arbitrary distinction to me.

 

[Kyriakos]

So... your point is machines are created while humans aren't - and therefore should have different rights, just because human body grew as a result of natural processes?
Regardless of how intelligent AI is? Seems very arbitrary distinction to me.

I actually don't think non-bio tied machines can have AI to speak of, so there is no issue of intelligence in the first place.