Re: [sl4] 'Ethical' uploading

From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Feb 11 2009 - 09:07:28 MST


--- On Wed, 2/11/09, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Uploads are programs. Their owners can do anything
> > they want with them. They can turn them off, reprogram them
> > as they wish, make copies and sell them, simulate torture,
> > etc.
>
> Not if the program is sentient. If you follow the above
> statement of yours then it is fine to do whatever you want
> to any AGI as well, if you can, no matter how sentient and
> intelligent it may be. From there it is only another step
> to say you may do whatever you want to other humans who
> happen to be weaker than your or you have the drop on.
> Either ethics extents beyond your specific species or it is
> a sham. There is no ethical "ownership" among
> autonomous sentients of sufficient intelligence.

Well, I expected this sentiment. When something looks like a human and acts like a human, we tend to treat it like a human. But uploads are not human. They will have access to vastly more computing power and will have a vastly faster rate of reproduction and evolution. It is only a short step from granting human rights to machines to human extinction.

Not that this would be viewed as bad by the machines that replace us. We are programmed to not want to die. We sincerely want to believe that our consciousness transfers to the machine that imitates us. So I wave my magic wand and your soul moves to your silicon implementation, as your carbon version becomes a zombie and is led off to the recycling vats, screaming in protest as they always do. No scientific experiment can refute my claim.

But it's not like we have a choice. Humans are easily tricked into installing stupid viruses on their computers. What chance do we have against a vastly superior intelligence that pretends to be a human?
http://www.sl4.org/archive/0207/4935.html

> That is species centric BS. I would expect better on SL4.

Sorry, it's how I'm programmed.

-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com



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