From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!constellation!uokmax!a.cs.okstate.edu!onstott Tue Jan 28 12:15:20 EST 1992
Article 2980 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: Ethics and AI ( AI, software-pit-bulls, OR ...? )
References: <knmip5INNob2@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.034354.3816@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 03:43:54 GMT

>From article <knmip5INNob2@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>, by silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber):
> 
>  Another philosophical dimension impinging upon the AI debate
>  is the question of ethics.  While the debate about the possibility
>  of Ai goes on, practitioners of AI-systems-construction are out 
>  there building things whose funding is often dominated by
>  military sources.  Hence, in academic reports re: AI systems work,
>  it has been quite common to see human-computer dialogs in which the
>  computer's focus is on recognizing enemy subs and upon advising as
>  to which of a number of lethal weapons would be optimal to use in
>  dispatching the foe.  If more consideration is not given to ethical
>  questions in the construction of Ai systems, then 
>  ( regardless of their onto-episto-logical competence or lack 
>  thereof ) Ai systems will turn out to be the pit-bulls of
>  software technology!

  If not subject to racism!  We want to create a human being from
computers with the assumption we will dominate it.  Sounds like
a Blade Runner situation to me.  And no one is talking about this;
wonder why?  If the situation is real; so are the consequences.

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu

"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."
                                              -- Carl G. Jung
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