From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!utcsri!rpi!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!caen!uvaarpa!murdoch!Turing.ORG!lfoard Thu Oct  8 10:10:58 EDT 1992
Article 7091 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!utcsri!rpi!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!caen!uvaarpa!murdoch!Turing.ORG!lfoard
>From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: AI rights :-)
Message-ID: <1992Oct2.122504.22245@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
References: <1992Oct1.232114.1593@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1992Oct2.021220.18977@meteor.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 12:25:04 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <1992Oct2.021220.18977@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>Not being a person who believes that the universe was created only 10,000
>years ago or any such nonsense, it is still my working hypothesis that
>information processing is neither necessary nor sufficient for sentience.
                                   ^^^^^^^^^

Maybe not sufficient, but how can one be sentient without having a brain?
Don't resort to the supernatural, it still requires information processing.

>Before I will willingly grant rights to your constructs, you will have
>to convince me otherwise, or provide some other evidence for their 
>sentience. What evidence do you have that artificial sentience is
>equivalent to artificial intelligence? 

Not all artificial intelligence would be, but there is absolutely no reason
to believe that a machine cannot be sentient, after all we are machine and
we are sentient....

>What evidence do you have that
>artificial sentience is possible? 

The only thing that would prevent this is the existance of a supernatural,
something which there is absolutely no evidence for. Otherwise we know
that AI is possible since the brain works.

>How do you propose to distinguish between
>sentient "true AI" constructs and mere non-sentient though complex tools?

Whats the reason to distinguish between a person and a complex tool?
What distinguishs an AI passing the turing test from a human being?
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