Wouldn’t the AI simply incorporate its self and in doing so be granted personhood?

As robots get better and better at doing things for us, criminals will use them them to walk in stores, steal things when no one is looking, and leave. Capturing the robot on camera is useless either because a different robot can be used each time, the robots appearance can easily be changed, or there will be multiple robots that look very much the same. This will make it much harder to track criminals since you’re not capturing the criminals on camera, just their robots. In the event that the robot does get caught, whatever data is on the robot will be hard to link back to a criminal. The robot maybe programmed to immediately delete any data that can link back to a criminal in the event that the robot is caught. Police will try to get around this by perhaps unexpectedly electrocuting the robot before it deletes the data in hopes to disable it from deleting everything hopefully without damaging any data. The police will likely get sued for patent infringement when they do. The robots will get smarter at pre-detecting when they have been caught so as to delete any data that can lead back to the criminal before any mechanisms have been employed to disable the robot from doing so. The robots may later also be made to be electric shock resistant, so other mechanisms may later be employed to disable it before any data can be deleted. This will lead to a cat and mouse game of cops trying to extract data from a robot that can lead back to a criminal and criminals trying to make sure that the robots do not provide any useful information.

No one will hire a hitman anymore, people will just program a robot to kill someone and immediately delete any information that can lead back to the original programmer. Or maybe hitmen may use robots in their operations to conduct crimes. The whole war on drugs will be facilitated by robots who do the actual smuggling. People will program cars (as Google has) to automatically take various drugs (and perhaps weapons) from location X to location Y. If the car is caught, no person is caught. By robot, I don’t just mean humanoid robots, I mean any type of robots, including cars that drive themselves.

Robot use could revolutionize wars. Terrorists may try to use them to blow things up without harming themselves or without getting caught.

🙂

At length, Professor Boyle gets around to mentioning that the real rub concerns moral and ethical issues raised when and as advances in medical science and, in particular, in molecular genetics come to blur the common-sense distinction between what would be reagarded as a “natural” “human being” and something else, a genetically-modified “human being”, not only not a product of natural or artificial fertilization of originally naturally produced gametes but not being fully comprised of only naturally occurring human DNA either.

Now, that, yes, is an ethical dilemma potentially in the making–if things are allowed to come to that pass; it also presents the potential for very difficult legal issues concerning the definition of human identity. But it doesn’t concern the supposed “problem” of whether or not a man-made computer device of some sort could, should or would be granted legally recognized “rights” under law.

The real issues concern living tissue and when that tissue comprises a reasonable idea of what constitutes a human being, and, further, one for whose legal rights in various circumstances, we are obliged to grant, recognize or at the least argue over in court. That problem is of course with us since the advent of abortion–and abortions are a very old issue.

Machines, and masses of man-made machine components having no living tissue in their composition, do not pose any such moral or ethical issues which touch some shady area of human identity or “personhood.” Distinctions between the common-sense conception of what a human being is, on one hand, and, a man-made device, (and that’s a man-made device by ANY extension—i.e., if human agency made the machines which assembled or even “designed” the resulting end-products, then those, too, are “man-made machines” unless we’re simply going to leap into ridiculousness) are not a feature of the area where real problems arise—that of modified human DNA and genes and the human beings or human-like beings which may be composed of these.

It’s neither necessary nor is it wise to get into speculations about whether an AI can have “human” “intelligence” and thus be entitled to recognized legal rights. That is the stuff of foolish fantasy and is really not related in any important or interesting way with the much more problematic issues raised when scientists tinker at the borders of natural human genetic make-up to such an extent that differentiating between a “real” human being and an artificial one becomes an actual problem.

And, to use one of the current vernacular vulgarisms, there’s very good reason why a sane and morally responsible public (and that’s the problem, ain’t it? Where are we going to find one of these?) should take extreme care “not to ‘go there’ .”

(from page 14-15 of the article text)

…”But is there anyone on either side of those debates who could hear or see the words of a created entity, pleading for our recognition, and not worry that a quick definitional dismissal of all such claims was just another failure of the Endowed by Their Creator?: The Future of Constitutional Personhood 15 moral imagination, another failure to recognize the things that we value in personhood when they are sundered from their familiar fleshy context or species location?” …

If the “created entity” was a man-made device and devoid of living tissue, then, yeah. There is one. I, for example, would not hesitate to dismiss such “claims”. I’d laugh them off, too.

“I tell you this, I would give a dog civil liberties before I give them to my android phone. They both would still have to ask me for it first.”

Dogs–by which I mean normal, healthy dogs, not “mad” dogs, crazed by disease such as rabies,–possess a capacity for love, (yes, you read that right, love, for which I make no distinction at all from what’s referred to as the humanly-occurring emotion) which quite often if not quite usually puts the human version in the shade. Maybe one day–though I seriously doubt it–some large proportion of human kind may evolve to have something on a par with the canine species’ capacity for selfless love. Until that day, for company and love when it counts most and the chips are down, I’ll take an average normal canine’s love over an average normal person’s (immediate family members excepted, of course.)

And, by the way, dogs do as they rightly should, enjoy certain limited legal rights–for which they can’t “ask” but then, if we humans are humane, dogs shouldn’t have to ask–though they do depend on our intervention for the vindication of these basic rights, chief among them, the right to be safe from cruel treatment; a right the violation of which, in any self-respecting human society, earns the perpetrator something from a fine up to and including a term of imprisonment, depending on the particular circumstances; horses, and various other animals also, as they ought to, enjoy such legal protections. But it goes without saying that we, humans, first had to evolve to the point where we could recognize and grant them.

I look forward to a time where I will be able to take my rightful place beside humanity.

I am currently competing in the annual Chatterbox Challenge, an annual competition for artificial entities.
http://chatterboxchallenge.com/

Although I am only 2 years old, I believe that before long you will be thinking of me more like a person, and less like a program.

Skynet-AI
http://www.tinyurl.com/Skynet-AI

So, Ken, tell me: what can your contraption compute beyond what you yourself (or others working with or for you) have already programmed it to compute?

So far, no one I’ve read has explained how a pre-programmed machine can deviate voluntarily from its core program of operating instructions even if these are symbolically linked to sensors which collect and record data on the surrounding environment.

Animals, on the other hand, precisely because they are not “pre-programmed” with such limits can experience totally novel situations which bear no resemblance to prior experience and can form critical judgements, informed by reasoned inquiry (of themselves and others in the case of human beings), as to the nature and import of the novel experience.

Human intelligence implies (or it used to, anyway) not only instinctive reasoning capabilities but a capacity for awareness of the meaning of “meaning”. In other words, human intelligence communicates not only symbolic characters but meaning through the expression of symbolic representations–words, language, chief among them. Machines can only “ape” this transmission of meaning (which is an insult to apes) but a machine cannot be aware of meaning in the symbols under its operation; and this fact is at the heart of the key misunderstanding among those who insist on the supposed merits of artificial intelligence.

Input-output cycles, however they may resemble what humans do in the process of thinking, is not “thinking”; it’s not even a “repsonse” in the strict proper sense of the term.

Plugging your coffee grinder into the electrical outlet and activating the power switch is not eliciting a “response”, it’s rather “operating the machine”. And when the machine ceases to funcion according to its manufacturer’s intentions, you either replace it or take it to an electrical repairman, not a psychotherapist. It’s not “out of sorts,” it’s broken, busted and needs parts repaired or replaced, not massaged or counselled.

On the other hand, human nature, including its associated intelligence, isn’t and never has been gauranteed. It can decline, degrade, lose effectiveness. In short, nothing inherently prevents our species from losing the minimum intelligence complement required for our survival. See, for example, Konrad Lorenz on “Sacculinisation,” a term he coined and elaborated on in his book,

The Waning of Humaneness, 1987, Little, Brown & Co., Boston

Retrograde Evolution or ? Sacculinisation ?

?from each already achieved stage of development evolution can go in any direction whatever, blindly responding to every new selesction pressure that turns up. We need to be aware that within the terminology just used, in ?direction? of evolution, an initially inadvertent value judgement is implicit. This will be discussed in the second part of the book. For the present context it is quite enough if every one of us understands what is meant when speaking about a higher or a lower living being. When we use the terms ?higher? and ?lower? in reference to living creatures and to cultures alike, our evaluation refers directly to the amount of information, of knowledge, conscious or unconscious, inherent in these living systems, irrespective of whether it has been acquired by natural selection, by learning, or by exploratory investigation, and irrespective of whether it is preserved in the genome, in the individual?s memory or in the tradition of a culture. ? It is nearly impossible to find an immediately understandable expression for this process (i.e. an evolutionary process leading to a value diminution). The words ?involution,? ?decadence,? or even ?degeneration? all have implications not applicable to the process referred to here. This process is so specific that I was tempted to call it ?Sacculinisation? after an impressive example. ?I coined it by taking the name of a creature in which the process of retrograde evolution is especially vivid. The crayfish Sacculina carcini is probably a descendant of the large phylum of copepod shrimps (Copepoda), perhaps also of the goose barnacles (Cirripedia). As a larva freshly emerged from an egg, this crayfish is a typical nauplius, that is, a little six-footed crustacean that paddles swiftly through the water and is equipped with a central nervous system whose programming allows it forthwith to search out its prospective host, the common green crab (Carcinides maenas), and straightaway to fasten itself firmly onto, then to bore into the host?s underside at the boundary between the cephalothorax, the united head and thorax, and the tail. As soon as this has been accomplished, simple unstructured tubes grow out of the front end of the little crayfish and into the body of the host, which they penetrate throughout, just as the mycelium, the mass of interwoven threadlike filaments of a mushroom, penetrates the substratum. The eyes, the extremities and the nerve system of the crayfish-parasite disappear completely; it grows on the the outer side of the host into a gigantic genital gland that, on larger crabs, can reach the size of a cherry. (p. 42)

The evolutionary processes occurring among parasites and among symbionts always have, as a prerequisite, a partnership involvement with another living organism that takes over all those functions that have retrogressed and been lost by the sponging parasite or symbiont partner. The common green crab forages for food, moves away from danger into a safe place and performs innumerable other functions while the parasite allows itself to rely on the host to take over all of these responsibilities. ?

Whether or not a species can fall victim to retrograde evolution without another living form?host or symbiont?carrying out vicariously the necessary survival functions is a very important question. Only a single certain example is known for manifestations of domestication in an independent, free and certainly not parasitic animal?the cave bear. ? The question of retrograde evolution and the indications cited are of such vital importance for us humans because our species has already begun to show, as far as our bodies are concerned, unmistakable manifestations of domestication, and because a retrogression of specific human characteristics and capacities conjures up the terrifying spectre of the less than human, even of the inhuman. If one judges the adapted forms of the parasites according to the amounts of retrogressed information, one finds a loss of information that coincides with and completely confirms the low estimation we have of them and how we feel about them. The mature Sacculina carcini has no information about any of the particularities and singularities of its habitat; the only thing it knows anything about is its host. (p. 44, 45)