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Article 6259 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: The Lawnmower Man.
Message-ID: <2672@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 15 Jun 92 16:47:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: ucl-cs.2672
Sender: news@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Lines: 54


> From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
> Subject: 'home' is where you find it: Re: Transducers
> [...]
> Somebody really connected to a virtual terminal connected to this network
> has already pointed out that a program running on your favorite computer,
> IS physically embodied.

That's a sub-plot in "The Lawnmower Man". The film has just been
released here in the UK.

       SPOILER:SPOILER:SPOILER:SPOILER:SPOILER:SPOILER:SPOILER

The story concerns The Scientist who takes on The Lawnmower Man as
piece of experiental apparatus, since the The Scientist's best chimp
has just been killed "trying to escape". The chimp has been training
by drugs and Virtual Reality to be a "cheap" and effective killing
machine.

The Scientist thinks that when he tries the idea on the The Lawnmower
Man he has removed the "agression factor". But The Shop have replaved
the bottles in the fridge with the full dose.

The Lawnmower Man becomes a superbeing and ends up by "merging" with
the mainframe. 

He then phones home.

                    --------------------


The Lawnmower Man's name is Jobe (c.f. biblical Job).

What sticks in my gullet is that The Lawnmower Man is seen as some
sort of laboratory rat. He has "a mental age of six": he may be
autistic, as shown by his skills with the lawnmower, both as a
engineer and a horticulturaist. So The Scientist sees fit to use Jobe
a test bed for his theories. On the up side he increase the IQ of
Jobe by many points. On the downside, Jobe tastes forbidden fruit for
the first time, including sex and "virtual sex".

It all ends badly. The Lawnmower Man ends up as the Ghost in the
Machine.

AI Philisophy: can we ever consider doing this for real - that is to
say taking a "sub-human" and making them superhuman by adding in more
intelligence?

Gordon.

------
Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT


