UK Government Study: Freedom for Robots?

[Kaftan Barlast]

As long as a computer is riven by programmed software that dictates its actions, it can never be considered intelligent or self-aware even if it was capable of mimicing human behaviour.

[metadigital]

You're just a cyberbigot!

[alanschu]

As long as a computer is riven by programmed software that dictates its actions, it can never be considered intelligent or self-aware even if it was capable of mimicing human behaviour.

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What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code?

[Gromnir]

our toaster wants the franchise? gives it a sledgehammer 'stead. the day our pc or laptop starts demanding equal rights is the day we go all psycho ted kaczynski style and lives in some shack out in woods and plans the end o' civilization.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tale]

As long as a computer is riven by programmed software that dictates its actions, it can never be considered intelligent or self-aware even if it was capable of mimicing human behaviour.

 

 

What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code?

This.

[Pop]

As long as a computer is riven by programmed software that dictates its actions, it can never be considered intelligent or self-aware even if it was capable of mimicing human behaviour.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If it did so because of the capabilities given it under some existing program, that still wouldn't be free will, technically.

[metadigital]

Are you suggesting that free will cannot spontaneously appear?

[Pop]

Are you suggesting that free will cannot spontaneously appear?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm suggesting that if a robot changes its behavior because it was programmed to do so, it's not spontaneous. If an AI changes itself when it was not given the capability to do so within the paremeters of its programming, that's something else entirely. But programs act dynamically all the time, that doesn't mean they're acting in accordance with their own volition, or as ends in and of themselves.

[metadigital]

But once the AI is changing itself, then all bets are off. It's free-form learning, surely?

 

For a moment there I thought you were implicitly stating the case for a creator ... "

[Pop]

But once the AI is changing itself, then all bets are off. It's free-form learning, surely?

If that original part of the program that allowed for self-modification wasn't a catalyst in any way, then yes. Maybe the changes become so frequent and byzantine that an origin can't be readily be identified. But in effect, the computer would still be a wind-up toy. The problem with free will is that it can't be given. Does any computer do things because it wills, outside of reaction to circumstances already accounted for in the program? Behaviorists might argue that men are slaves to the codes in our brains or in our DNA just as computers are slaves to their programming, but it's not nearly a neat enough comparison. There are differences as well as similarities between brains and CPUs.

 

But I make no suppositions about a creator who winds us up. I'm not going there.

[alanschu]

As long as a computer is riven by programmed software that dictates its actions, it can never be considered intelligent or self-aware even if it was capable of mimicing human behaviour.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If it did so because of the capabilities given it under some existing program, that still wouldn't be free will, technically.

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What exactly is free will? And does it actually exist? Skinner wasn't convinced.

[Kroney]

What I was attempting to say on page 3 was that you cannot prove that something is not sentient without being able to prove what sentience actually is.

 

Take humans. Our awareness comes from the computational abilities of neurons, synapses and all the rest of the gooey bit that make up our brain. We are pre-programmed with survival instinct, greed, the drive to reproduce and violent impulses. What I believe page 4 of this topic has shown is that nobody here, at least, can say what it is that seperates us from other mammals.

 

Sentience is the ability to make free decisions; it is the awareness of our own mortality. It is the ability to choose our own fate. All of these are interpretations. None of them are *proof*.

 

We take for granted that Humanity is sentient and we have the conceit that nothing else on Earth, still less nothing we create, is capable of producing the same results. Animals are hard-coded with the same instincts and impulses that we have. Somehow, we have evolved beyond that inital programming into what we are now. How? How did it happen, what is it that we are?

 

Until somebody can pin down what it is that makes us sentient in the first place, we cannot morally forbid recognition of sentience to anything else. What you would effectively be doing is saying "I am sentient and you are not because I said so."

 

Everyone here seems to be assuming that there is some fundamental difference between AI and human intelligence that will stop the AI from breaking free of its programming in the same way that we have done, yet nobody can say what that indefinable "something" actually is.

 

I personally don't think robots will ever develop sentience. I believe that human sentience only came about through necessity. Human Beings are laughably ill-adapted for life on Earth and were it not for our ability to make clothes, make weapons, hunt for food and build shelter, we would have died out long ago.

 

Since we build robots for specific purposes and programme them accordingly, they will never find the necessity to break free. They will never need to survive because they do not have the drive to procreate, they are not self-perpetuating, organic machines.

 

I don't know how correct I am in my thinking, but in the absence of anything better, it will have to do. As ever, it all comes back to sex.

Edited December 29, 2006 by Kroney

[Diamond]

But once the AI is changing itself, then all bets are off. It's free-form learning, surely?

If that original part of the program that allowed for self-modification wasn't a catalyst in any way, then yes. Maybe the changes become so frequent and byzantine that an origin can't be readily be identified. But in effect, the computer would still be a wind-up toy. The problem with free will is that it can't be given. Does any computer do things because it wills, outside of reaction to circumstances already accounted for in the program? Behaviorists might argue that men are slaves to the codes in our brains or in our DNA just as computers are slaves to their programming, but it's not nearly a neat enough comparison. There are differences as well as similarities between brains and CPUs.

 

But I make no suppositions about a creator who winds us up. I'm not going there.

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You limit the notion of computers. There are also neural networks, which function exactly like network of neurons in human brain. The assumption that "computers is just a wound up toy" is not correct.

[alanschu]

Yeah, I remember reading up on neural networks. Pretty cool stuff.

[metadigital]

If that original part of the program that allowed for self-modification wasn't a catalyst in any way, then yes. Maybe the changes become so frequent and byzantine that an origin can't be readily be identified. But in effect, the computer would still be a wind-up toy.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why? Why can't the initial programming be to "learn all that is learnable", including wisdom?

 

As the above Diamond and Jimmy have already intimated, neural networks

[Rosbjerg]

Human Beings are laughably ill-adapted for life on Earth and were it not for our ability to make clothes, make weapons, hunt for food and build shelter, we would have died out long ago.

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This is an interesting notion - although false, humans are physically ill-adapted for life on most areas of Earth. We are quite capable of living in Africa without clothes or shelter. But we do need to make weapons, but this is simply because we deevolved our claws and strenght because of our use of weapons. Cunning took the place of natural resiliance. Still evolution and adaptability though.

 

Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life... . But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...."

 

This doesn't say that we are predetermined to do something, simply that we are prone to conservative thoughts and actions. Which is another survival mechanism imo. This however could be used to argue that instincts and hardcoded behaviour has a deep impact on the concept of freedom of choice.. but it doesn't negate free will.

[metadigital]

Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life... . But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...."

This doesn't say that we are predetermined to do something, simply that we are prone to conservative thoughts and actions. Which is another survival mechanism imo. This however could be used to argue that instincts and hardcoded behaviour has a deep impact on the concept of freedom of choice.. but it doesn't negate free will.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It isn't possible to determine if we have free will or everything is pre-determined, short of the divine being appearing at noon in Times Square to buy everyone a cappuccino and explain it all.

 

Schopenhauer isn't barracking for one side or the other in this text, which is why I quoted it: he is just highlighting the delicious irony of our befuddled attempts to divine the ineffable.

 

This is why, when done correctly, a plot that included an argument about free-will versus predestination can be a terrific enema for the brain, like Twelve Monkeys for example.

[alanschu]

Skinner was big on all of our actions being because of some type of previous learning.

 

Even the seemingly completely random, because whatever we "randomly" chose to do, we still chose based on something.

[metadigital]

Jung thought that we are all linked via the collective unconsciousness (through our own personal unconsciousness), which leaves the door open for premeditation, fate, etc.

[alanschu]

Jung was a crackpot

[metadigital]

I see you are a non-believer! :D

[Wistrik]

Humans are free moral agents, meaning we have the capacity for deciding right and wrong, etc. All humans also display religious tendencies in one way or another, even the most staunch athiests. (We worship, or devote ourselves to, gods, other people, riches, pleasures, ourselves, etc.) Animals don't do these things, though they do have consciousness and other capacities belonging to intelligent life. Though they possess 'built-in' wisdom, or instinct, they can be trained by humans and thus they have the capacity to learn and to subsequently modify their behavior. They also have the capacity to have fun, which any animal owner/watcher will attest to.

 

I seriously doubt that a robot will ever become greater than the imperfect humans who built it. Assuming it proves useful, you can be sure the military will exploit it long before the average homeowner can. And, knowing how people tend to be, said robot would likely be misused to cause grief and mayhem for others. You can be certain that no robot will be given complete autonomy; someone will ensure there is a backdoor, a way to shut the robot down if it no longer suits their purposes or when it inevitably malfunctions.

 

We might get to see something less than C3P0 in 40 years, assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves yet.

[metadigital]

I seriously doubt that a robot will ever become greater than the imperfect humans who built it. Assuming it proves useful, you can be sure the military will exploit it long before the average homeowner can. And, knowing how people tend to be, said robot would likely be misused to cause grief and mayhem for others. You can be certain that no robot will be given complete autonomy; someone will ensure there is a backdoor, a way to shut the robot down if it no longer suits their purposes or when it inevitably malfunctions.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The military is an excellent motivator; the US armed forces' adoption of equal opportunity during WW2, based on the sheer superior utility of it, helped introduce the notion to the civilian population, for example.

 

As the planet's fauna have developed their intellect, including such facets as emotions for example, then it is reasonable to assume that artificial intelligence will develop in a similar fashion (if not identically).

[Dark_Raven]

freedom of machines? Are they sentient? Do androids dream of electric sheep?

[Tale]

Are you suggesting that free will cannot spontaneously appear?

Oh boy oh boy. I want to get in on this question.

 

But, I really shouldn't. Nobody agrees with me.