If a machine felt it was alive, If a machine is indistiguishable from a human being -- if it has consciousness and thought process and believes itself to be a alive, if it became sentient, should we give it the same basic right's that we have to life?

Otherwise, how would we explain what's so special about a biological human as opposed to a non-biological entity with consciousness. What is life? What is consciousness? How do we figure out if something is conscious or if it is alive? Or if it's conscious enough to be close-enough to a human being to "earn" rights?

If it shuts up when we pull its plug out. Shame it does not work with Melly, only the block button does.

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So you ask the famous question, what it is to be human. You might as well ask what's the true meaning of life.

Nah, I'm too busy now trying to drink from a cup with no hands.

^^ (IMG:http://media.profileheaven.com/images/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

should we even allow a machine to feel humanity?

should we allow consciousness in a being that cannot feel?

make no mistake a computer that was able to have consciousness would be able to be far more intelligent than us and is a worrying prospect

There was a thing i saw that said we could never build anything to be smarter than us. It would be quicker and more accurate, but never smarter, as all it's knowledge would initally have to be based on human knowledge and human entered equations.

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I think we should. Rights don't necessarily come from biology, they come from the awareness of the individual and their ability to experience and suffer, and our ability to empathise.

This post has been edited by DougieFFC: Mar 10 2010, 4:50 PM

we cant build it however within 50 years computers will be able to have the entire processing power of the entire populations brains, if this type of machine were to be able to gain thought and were to build its own machines then is where the problem would occur (the animatrix was interesting at parts, machines make the machines in a cycle till the point the machines are "smarter" than us). While we would be the ones to enter the equations, we have already developed computers which can learn, if we applied this to a computer which could process information thousands of times faster than we could ever imagine (eg future computer), then we can actually build something which would become smarter than us

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

"And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters."
(IMG:http://13thcolony.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/cylon01-cu.jpg)

This post has been edited by DougieFFC: Mar 10 2010, 11:24 PM

Why the hell would anyone want to build a machine capable of feelings?


Anything with feelings has the ability to kill or seek revenge. We have enough of this. Fuck making something that's impossible to get shot of.

pretty difficult code to write, also if a robot were to create a robot then such laws would not be necessarily be written into these robots as a robot not programming this code in would not be in violation of these three laws

The Colonials were stupid enough to not program the robots with the rules, then?

This post has been edited by Cappie: Mar 10 2010, 11:54 PM

They forgot to check for Trojans:

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I'm beginning to think that, John, with all this sudden science shit, is a robot sent from another dimension to spy on us all. (IMG:http://media.profileheaven.com/images/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

They've obviously abducted Eidur Gudjohnsen and copied his DNA and sent him back as that twat.

This post has been edited by System ShoX: Mar 11 2010, 12:06 AM

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I think that's the key issue here. Life is just an arbitrary scientific definition (MRS GREN).

How would we measure consciousness though? We can't even quantify it in organisms we know to be conscious (ourselves) as far as i know. I think the idea that we could create something in computer software which we don't even understand ourselves is far fetched at the moment. But who knows what the future will bring. I read about a really interesting experiment recently, where individual computers are programmed to behave like individual neurons. That's simple enough to do, as a neuron is an electrochemical device. Then, you create billions of them and network them together, and just see what the fuck happens (IMG:http://media.profileheaven.com/images/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) Very interesting concept. Basically a way to simulate something complex the human brain by creating millions of replicas of it's smallest subdivided unit, which we do understand, than connecting them up. Surely, that's just a human brain, right?

Certainly is a very interesting concept.