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Article 5557 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Morality and artificial minds
Message-ID: <1992May11.170615.44727@spss.com>
>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Date: Mon, 11 May 1992 17:06:15 GMT
References: <1992May8.155052.13848@psych.toronto.edu> <uetinINNco5@early-bird.think.com> <1992May10.003028.19333@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992May10.003028.19333@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu 
(Michael Gemar) writes:
>I am still interested in hearing from other AI supporters.  Do you
>all agree with Hans that morality is simply not a problem for
>artificial minds?  

Not me.  We should treat artificial minds morally, once they exist.  
However, I think discovering what this actually means will be far from simple.

Notions such as "dead" and "kill" have to be rethought when it comes to AI.
"Killing" a process is not like killing an animal; you can bring the process
back.  Presumably "killing" an AI would involve both stopping the process
and destroying the code.  But the process of programming an AI would have
to involve multiple iterations of this very process, as bugs are worked out.
Have you killed the AI if you erased the executable but not the source code?
If you erased both but have a backup of an earlier, less debugged version?

Animals inevitably die, but computer programs need not.  Do AIs have the
right to immortal life?

What are the economic implications of AI?  Is the AI a slave, an employee,
or some totally new thing?  What economic obligations does it have?

Will it be considered cruel to give an AI trivial work to do, or not to
give it sufficient mental stimulation, or not to give it a robotic body,
or to let it run just one hour a week?

Fortunately there's a simple solution to many of these problems.
*Ask them.*  Recent history should make it clear that making unilateral
judgments about the rights and desires of another group is highly immoral.
Let the AIs tell us the answers to all these questions!


