Robot Rights

[R. Richard]

"Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be. We understand that you and you children are freezing in an abandoned building. We also know that your youngest child has pneumonia and needs hospital care in order to survive. However, we don't have time for you right now as we simply MUST address the issue of robot rights at this time. [I just saw Star Wars and R2D2 was soooo cute!] Just endeavor to persevere! The Government.

What you people in the UK need is a western sense of justice. "Get a rope!" Comment?

UK May Consider Giving Robots 'Rights'

Robots might one day be smart enough to demand emancipation from their human owners, raising the prospects they'll have to be treated as citizens, according to a speculative paper released by the British government.

Among the warnings: a "monumental shift" could occur if robots were developed to the point where they could reproduce, improve or think for themselves.

"Correctly managed, there is a very real possibility for increased labor output and greater intelligence to be provided by robots that will ultimate lead to greater human prosperity and an improvement of the human condition," it said.

However, it warned that robots could sue for their rights if these were denied to them.

Should they prove successful, the paper said, "states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time."

The paper did not address the likelihood such a rights-seeking robot would be developed, and it predicted the issue would not come up for at least another 20 years.

But innovations raised in other papers issued Wednesday, including artificial retinas and drugs for dramatically lengthened lifespans, were thought to be only a decade away.

The research, commissioned by the U.K. Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Center, looks ahead to the year 2056 to identify issues "of potentially significant impact or opportunity." It was put together by British research company Ipsos-MORI, the consultancy Outsights and the American-based Institute for the Future.

"We're not in the business of predicting the future, but we do need to explore the broadest range of different possibilities to help ensure government is prepared in the long term and considers issues across the spectrum in its planning," said Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser.

The papers, he added, "are aimed at stimulating debate and critical discussion to enhance government's short and long term policy and strategy."

 

[rgraham666]

It's going to be a very long time, if ever, before that happens.

Back when I was a computer programmer I used to piss off the AI freaks amongst my colleagues by stating, "How can you fake something when you don't even know what it is?"

For cautionary tales about the problems with robots and/or AI I would recommend Larry Niven's story, The Schumman Computer. Also Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories and novels.

In movies there is of course Skynet and the Terminators, those idiotic ED-209s from Robocop and the Borg.

 

[R. Richard]

It's going to be a very long time, if ever, before that happens.

Back when I was a computer programmer I used to piss off the AI freaks amongst my colleagues by stating, "How can you fake something when you don't even know what it is?"

I was also a computer programmer. I attended a meeting where they wanted to replace a ship Captain with a computer program. I got up and explained, "In order to skipper a big, ocean going ship it takes about 20 years of experience with commands of gradually increasing responsibility. Now you want me to write a computer program to do that. Of course, I can do that in about 20 minutes. You people need mental help." I left to shocked silence among the "programmed Captain" people and a standing ovation from the actual ship's Captains in the room.

 

[oggbashan]

Also Asimov's Bicennential Man to give the other side of the picture.

Og

 

[R. Richard]

Also Asimov's Bicennential Man to give the other side of the picture.

Og

I have read a lot of scifi and have seen all sides of the robot story.

I think I was off base with the "get a rope" comment. I understand that you Brits more favor burning at the stake type of thing.

 

[oggbashan]

I have read a lot of scifi and have seen all sides of the robot story.

I think I was off base with the "get a rope" comment. I understand that you Brits more favor burning at the stake type of thing.

Could be pointless with a robot.

Besides, we haven't burnt anyone at the stake since before the American Revolution. Hanging, drawing and quartering is still possible (in theory) for High Treason. Burning at the stake was more merciful. The condemned person had to stay alive until the quartering. Most victims burnt at the stake were strangled before the fire was lit.

Og

 

[Liar]

There's plenty enough artificial intelligence all around us today. We call them buerocrats. Most wouldn't pass a Turing test.

 

[R. Richard]

Could be pointless with a robot.

Actually I was referring to the use of a rope on government officials. Extreme problems demand extreme solutions.

Besides, we haven't burnt anyone at the stake since before the American Revolution. Hanging, drawing and quartering is still possible (in theory) for High Treason. Burning at the stake was more merciful. The condemned person had to stay alive until the quartering. Most victims burnt at the stake were strangled before the fire was lit.

Og

Strangling a person before burning at the stake seems to rather truncate the point of the exercise.

 

[oggbashan]

Actually I was referring to the use of a rope on government officials. Extreme problems demand extreme solutions.


Strangling a person before burning at the stake seems to rather truncate the point of the exercise.

The point of burning at the stake was that the Church didn't shed blood. Strangling didn't shed blood.

Prince Bishops who had private armies carried spiked clubs instead of swords. They did shed blood but in an acceptable manner.

Og

 

[Zeb_Carter]

And are you all forgeting the darkest AI/Robot moive of all time?


The Matrix...

Where the robots turn on us and use us for batteries.

 

[R. Richard]

The point of burning at the stake was that the Church didn't shed blood. Strangling didn't shed blood.

Prince Bishops who had private armies carried spiked clubs instead of swords. They did shed blood but in an acceptable manner.

Og

I can understand the prohibition against shedding blood. In many countries the shedding of royal blood was prohibited. When a rival Prince was executed, it was generally done without shedding blood. I assume that the prhibition against shedding royal blood was a sort of self protection thing by the royals who ordered the executions.

The spiked club thing is as confusing to me as it is to you.

 

[R. Richard]

And are you all forgeting the darkest AI/Robot moive of all time?


The Matrix...

Where the robots turn on us and use us for batteries.

There was a sequence of early scifi novels where there were military robots left after a global war. The military robots were constructed to resemble nurses, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, etc. If the unwary person got close enough to the robot, the robot would execute the person with knives that extended from the robot body and cut the victim to pieces.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Just don't believe in artificial intelligence, myself. Correspondingly, I never got into sci-fi/fantasy stuff at all. I think I'll sooner see a time when computers become as valuable as a paperweight and perfectly useless than see a time when they become "alive" and whatnot.

 

[R. Richard]

Just don't believe in artificial intelligence, myself. Correspondingly, I never got into sci-fi/fantasy stuff at all. I think I'll sooner see a time when computers become as valuable as a paperweight and perfectly useless than see a time when they become "alive" and whatnot.

I would disagree. Yesterday I had to call a business. I got into a voice mail system and the voice mail would ask me questions and I would respond. My responses selected a path through the voice mail system. [Just for kicks, I tried varying my responses a little and found that OK worked as well as yes.] If that voice mail system were transported way back, say to the 1950s, they would have executed the designers for witchcraft.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I would disagree. Yesterday I had to call a business. I got into a voice mail system and the voice mail would ask me questions and I would respond. My responses selected a path through the voice mail system. [Just for kicks, I tried varying my responses a little and found that OK worked as well as yes.] If that voice mail system were transported way back, say to the 1950s, they would have executed the designers for witchcraft.

I can certainly grant that today's technology would be harder to accept fifty or a hundred years ago than it would today--but I don't think that's the evidencing for AI as much as the evidencing for ignorance.

From what I understand AI to be, I think it's just sci-fi-geek-wet-dreams moreso than reality--and vastly more. I certainly could say that the 1950's would regard the voicemail system as "Is that a real person?" or a miracle of machine intelligence--but it isn't. Its not machine intelligence at all.

To profoundly state that the technology of the future, if presently to us today, would be the same experience still says nothing on the credibility of AI actually existing--only the existence of someone's ability to be fooled until the mechanism is explained.

 

[R. Richard]

Joe:
There is actually real artifical intelligence. The voice mail system is a VERY minor application, being almost entirely voice recognition. There is a race, held every year, in which drone vehicles race across a desert course. Most of the entrants are college computer departments. The first few years there were no finishers and most of the entrants stalled/crashed within a few hundred meters of the start. However, each year the entrants get better. The last year there were several finishers and most of the entrants went quite a ways before stalling.

I used to program drone aircraft control systems. The best of the systems were really quite advanced. They could handle almost any flight situation. [I can't give more detail, classified.] Again, such programs get better and better over time.

We are not quite at the level of an "android robot" that can mimic most aspects of human behavior, but that is not all that far off.

 

[Liar]

Joe:
There is actually real artifical intelligence. The voice mail system is a VERY minor application, being almost entirely voice recognition. There is a race, held every year, in which drone vehicles race across a desert course. Most of the entrants are college computer departments. The first few years there were no finishers and most of the entrants stalled/crashed within a few hundred meters of the start. However, each year the entrants get better. The last year there were several finishers and most of the entrants went quite a ways before stalling.

I used to program drone aircraft control systems. The best of the systems were really quite advanced. They could handle almost any flight situation. [I can't give more detail, classified.] Again, such programs get better and better over time.

We are not quite at the level of an "android robot" that can mimic most aspects of human behavior, but that is not all that far off.

What you're describing are increasingly complex algorithms, but still automated responses programmed by people. You said the word yourself: Mimic. These are algorithms designed to mimic their writer's intelligence, but are they intelligence?

Maybe we shouldn't talk about artificial intellegence, but artificial conscoiussness. That's the real kicker.

 

[R. Richard]

What you're describing are increasingly complex algorithms, but still automated responses programmed by people. You said the word yourself: Mimic. These are algorithms designed to mimic their writer's intelligence, but are they intelligence?

Maybe we shouldn't talk about artificial intellegence, but artificial conscoiussness. That's the real kicker.

There are AI programs that learn information beyond what is programmed into them. Even some of the tobot race programs are supposed to learn while the run the course.

There are no real "artificial consciousness" machines. Of course, there are machines that mimic consciousness, but that is not real artificial consciousness.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Joe:
There is actually real artifical intelligence. The voice mail system is a VERY minor application, being almost entirely voice recognition. There is a race, held every year, in which drone vehicles race across a desert course. Most of the entrants are college computer departments. The first few years there were no finishers and most of the entrants stalled/crashed within a few hundred meters of the start. However, each year the entrants get better. The last year there were several finishers and most of the entrants went quite a ways before stalling.

I used to program drone aircraft control systems. The best of the systems were really quite advanced. They could handle almost any flight situation. [I can't give more detail, classified.] Again, such programs get better and better over time.

We are not quite at the level of an "android robot" that can mimic most aspects of human behavior, but that is not all that far off.

I'm with Liar on this one...

You say "there is actually real artificial intelligence", but your example is just a series of implemented conditionals. I can agree that we can make a remote control race-car that turns left when it hits a bump--and more complex approximations of that sort of behavior, but that doesn't make it evident that we'll have a race-car that purely innovates.

I can say "a hundred years ago, the five minute mile was unheard of... and then was done... and the four minute mile was then unheard of... and then was done... so we're bound to get a three minute mile soon... and then a two minute mile... and then a one minute mile... and eventually people will be able to finish the mile before they even start it" and point to a progression of events... but that progression doesn't break through the natural and philosophical barrier between trend and defining limitation.

One of my best buddies works for the NSA doing programming, he says that AI is as likely as his penis coming to life all its own--which is to say, it may look like its responding to external stimuli and acting of its own accord and developing habits and whatnot... but it's still controlled externally. Programming a robot car through an obstacle course is external control, it just so happens that the controls are all front-loaded instead of experienced moment-to-moment.

The car is told "when X, do Y" or "when X, do something from list Y" or. Which is not a relational frame, but a database. He says, essentially, that the program can include the ability to calculate the best "Y" out of the list, but it can't actually make new "Y"s. In the case of the robot car, they don't develop new solutions to problems, only employ different solutions already programmed in them or some step-by-step re-analysis of what "Y" to go with.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Joe:
There is actually real artifical intelligence. The voice mail system is a VERY minor application, being almost entirely voice recognition. There is a race, held every year, in which drone vehicles race across a desert course. Most of the entrants are college computer departments. The first few years there were no finishers and most of the entrants stalled/crashed within a few hundred meters of the start. However, each year the entrants get better. The last year there were several finishers and most of the entrants went quite a ways before stalling.

I used to program drone aircraft control systems. The best of the systems were really quite advanced. They could handle almost any flight situation. [I can't give more detail, classified.] Again, such programs get better and better over time.

We are not quite at the level of an "android robot" that can mimic most aspects of human behavior, but that is not all that far off.

RR,

These "AIs" that you speak of are not. At most they are expert systems w/leaning, but only what they are programmed to learn. For instance the autonomous cars can only learn how to stay on the road, they cannot learn that the sky is blue because the gases in the atmosphere reflect blue light. They only know driving and the rules of the road.

 

[R. Richard]

What has been said is correct. There now exist limited AI capabilities. The AI systems are just a little more sophisticated than list processing, but they are steadily gaining in power.

Any intelligence system has its limits. A human, turned loose to run an obstacle course can crawl, walk, run, climb or even swim. However, the human can't fly. It isn't that the human doesn't know how to fly, the human has no physical capability to fly unaided.

A robot car can only do car things. It can move forward or back, turn and stop. It, like the human can't fly, it doesn't have the physical capability. A properly designed robot car can make decisions as to how large an obstacle it can climb over. In some cases, the decision is impacted by previous, learned experience. One of the problens with the original robot cars was that they would always choose the easiest route for the next few meters. Now, some of the robot race vehicles scan well ahead to see if there are obstacles that it night not be able to roll over and then make path decisions based on the long scan. The decisions are not just simple "if A, then evaluate AA[0]. AA[1], . . ., AA[n]" decisions. The example is binary logic. The robot race cars now use such things as fuzzy logic.

 

[Liar]

I won't be scared of The Robots taking over until someone manage to come up with Artificial Imagination.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I won't be scared of The Robots taking over until someone manage to come up with Artificial Imagination.

coming by to Liar... brilliant, I tell you!

I you...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

What has been said is correct. There now exist limited AI capabilities. The AI systems are just a little more sophisticated than list processing, but they are steadily gaining in power.

Any intelligence system has its limits. A human, turned loose to run an obstacle course can crawl, walk, run, climb or even swim. However, the human can't fly. It isn't that the human doesn't know how to fly, the human has no physical capability to fly unaided.

A robot car can only do car things. It can move forward or back, turn and stop. It, like the human can't fly, it doesn't have the physical capability. A properly designed robot car can make decisions as to how large an obstacle it can climb over. In some cases, the decision is impacted by previous, learned experience. One of the problens with the original robot cars was that they would always choose the easiest route for the next few meters. Now, some of the robot race vehicles scan well ahead to see if there are obstacles that it night not be able to roll over and then make path decisions based on the long scan. The decisions are not just simple "if A, then evaluate AA[0]. AA[1], . . ., AA[n]" decisions. The example is binary logic. The robot race cars now use such things as fuzzy logic.

Is that the same concept as fuzzy math they teach in the government indoctrination centers in the US?

 

[oggbashan]

"Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be. We understand that you and you children are freezing in an abandoned building. We also know that your youngest child has pneumonia and needs hospital care in order to survive. However, we don't have time for you right now as we simply MUST address the issue of robot rights at this time. [I just saw Star Wars and R2D2 was soooo cute!] Just endeavor to persevere! The Government.

"

The premise is flawed. With the National Health Service the hospital care would be provided - FREE.

If the family is homeless, the UK state has an obligation to provide housing and would do so. The only real homeless in the UK are those who refuse to be housed. If children were involved, the parents could be prosecuted for child abuse by rejecting offers of housing.

Og