Mary Poppins 3000s of the World Unite: A Moral Paradox in the Creation of Artificial Intelligence

For moral reasons, we cannot (now or in the future) create robots to replace humans in every undesirable job. At least some of the labour we might hope to avoid will require human-equivalent intelligence. If we make machines with human-equivalent intelligence then we must start thinking about them as our moral equivalents. If they are our moral equivalents then it is prima facie wrong to own them, or design them for the express purpose of doing our labour; for this would be to treat them as slaves, and it is wrong to treat our moral equivalents as slaves.

...

Complete entry

Posted by ben  on  02/04  at  07:33 AM

This is all very well, but doesn't take something into account, that is very important: Robots will have different capabilities to humans. So even if we are to treat them as humans, they will not be the same. Imagine being able to think at speeds millions of times faster, being able to link mentally to other machines, the internet, etc., and being able to truly multitask, controlling more than one body at a time. Such a person (machine or not) would have different conerns and priorities than a current, 'normal' human.

ben

Posted by MCP2012  on  04/16  at  11:17 AM

Mark: I appreciate your thoughtful article here. But since robots---even (if not, indeed, especially) superintelligent robots---are (or shall be) **artifacts**, I really don't see a moral or normative problem with designing them to **care** about (trans)humans so much that they shall be (more-or-less *literally*) HAPPY to tend to every need/want that humans might have. Indeed, think the ultimate socio/techo-economic imperative is to instantiate a state of affairs in which an ever growing/progressing number of tasks which heretofore would require (human) labor be either cybernated (and not necessarily "dumb" cybernation, either) OR **obviated**. We should seek to put the whole of mattergy (i.e., matter-&-energy) at the intelligent service of each and every (trans)human being.

Finding an institutional route to achieve this is crucial. See, e.g., the work(s) of Louis Kelso, Norman Kurland, Bucky Fuller, et al: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/kurland-norman_on-says-law-of-markets.html , http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/kurland-norman_george-fuller-and-kelso.html , and, in general, the references, papers, and ideas at http://www.cesj.org/

Posted by CMO  on  05/08  at  08:34 AM

Well H+ is a great performance of evolution. It will probably call homo super nus which they will be advance humans with more human condition. Games like kinetica imagine all the characters are tranhumans.

Posted by bryce  on  05/08  at  11:02 AM

> "If we make machines with human-equivalent intelligence then we must start thinking about them as our moral equivalents. "

Personally, I would have no moral issue, not even a hint of one, with pulling the plug on Deep Blue if a better Chess-playing computer came along. According to this author, should I?

---

Add your comment here:

Name:

Email:

Location:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: