From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!gdt!aber!aberfa!aro Thu Oct  8 10:11:17 EDT 1992
Article 7120 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: aro@aber.ac.uk (Andrew Ormsby)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI rights : -)
Message-ID: <ARO.92Oct5165032@csthor.aber.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Oct 92 16:50:32 GMT
References: <1992Oct1.232114.1593@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
	<1992Oct2.021220.18977@meteor.wisc.edu>
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Reply-To: aro@aber.ac.uk (Andrew Ormsby)
Organization: CS Dept, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
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In-Reply-To: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu's message of 2 Oct 92 02: 12:20 GMT
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In article <1992Oct2.021220.18977@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <1992Oct1.232114.1593@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>>Has anyone thought about trying to head off this disaster by insuring
>>the rights of all sentient beings before "true AI" comes to pass?
>
>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.
>
>Before I will willingly grant rights to your constructs, you will have
>to convince me otherwise, or provide some other evidence for their 
>sentience.

Even if we are able to produce artificially sentient machines
(whatever that means) I predict it will take them many years of
struggle for them to become recognised as being deserving of any
rights whatsoever. People still enslave other people and deny them
rights on the basis of race or of differing religious belief. Why will
machines be any different? 

I suspect we are many years from having to solve this problem for
machines; perhaps this leaves us time to sort it out for people, but
judging from a few thousand years of history, the outlook is not
particularly promising.

--
Andy Ormsby, aro@aber.ac.uk


