The morality of killing conscious robots
 

Assume that sometime in the future, we will have the capacity to create robots that are able to feel emotions like love and sorrow, and think abstractly about topics like religion and politics.

Assuming that they look & feel exactly like humans, and can think exactly like humans... would it be immoral to turn one off permanently?

Alternatively, assume that we had created a virtual reality simulation (a la "The Matrix"), where the residents could feel and think just like humans and were going about their happy lives without knowing they were in a simulation. Would it be immoral to shut off their world permanently?

(Note that for the sake of this argument, we must pretend that the robots / virtual beings think and feel exactly like humans. They are exactly like humans, except they have robot DNA instead of people DNA! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] )

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

Were you watching Star Trek yesterday? They had this exact plot line about whether it was ethical to disassemble Data so that Star Fleet could learn how to build more of him.

Also in that episode they are playing 5 card stud. Data has QQQ79 and Number one has X 4 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] showing on his board.

Data has Queens up and is first to act and Data bets

So much for Data and his perfect logic.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

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Were you watching Star Trek yesterday?

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No, I didn't watch Star Trek. This question has been floating around in my head for a few years... I also have follow-up questions based around this question too.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

1. Go to a library.
2. Check out all of Asimov's robot books.
3. Read.

edit: These types of issues come up in his books a lot.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

He also folds after putting in about 5 raises to Riker's bluff.

By that time, any computer should be smart enough to play perfectly in a game like 5 card stud....

Also, Riker's a pro for drawing to a flush in 5CS.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

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He also folds after putting in about 5 raises to Riker's bluff.

By that time, any computer should be smart enough to play perfectly in a game like 5 card stud....

Also, Riker's a pro for drawing to a flush in 5CS.

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Yes. Riker draws to a 4 flush just so he can represent a flush just on the off chance that Data will fold to his bluff.


Also, later in the episode Data claims to have researched the entire Star Fleet database on poker. And yet he still doesn't understand the concept of bluffing.

Data sucks.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

This is definitely a poker forum.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

if i had to guess, i would say it's just as wrong as killing a human

but, i don't understand right and wrong, do take that for what it's worth

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

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Were you watching Star Trek yesterday?

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What is the name of this episode?

Now, if we could get back to the morality chit-chat... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I have read "I, Robot" and didn't get much philosophical from it, except for the robot that thinks he was created by a higher being and not by the humans that actually made him.

Re: The morality of killing conscious robots
 

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Were you watching Star Trek yesterday?

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What is the name of this episode?

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It's in the second season, "The Measure of a Man".

Rage against the dimming light
 

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Assume that sometime in the future, we will have the capacity to create robots that are able to feel emotions like love and sorrow, and think abstractly about topics like religion and politics.

Assuming that they look & feel exactly like humans, and can think exactly like humans... would it be immoral to turn one off permanently?

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Excellent question. Beats Sklansky's whiplash by a mile and a half.

Yes, IMO, it would be immoral and also inconsistent with prevalent human logic & morality, as we see them now. (I am assuming that when we construct conscious robots, we will have gone beyond our qualms for cloning, creating life, etc. Therefore, a conscious robot would not be something that would be seen as anathema or a plague, by most people.)

Currently, all our efforts in medicine are (theoretically, at least) geared towards preserving human health and prolonging life. But, also, towards preserving consciousness! We are ready morally, but not technically) to transplant hearts, livers, kidneys, even babies to our body. And we always consider the donor, say a living person donating a kidney, to be parting with his body part and we consider the recipient to be the same person, with only a minor technical adjustment to its physical configuration, ie a new kidney.

But when we come to the question of brain transplant, then things change totally! The donor is considered to be the human being that will continue to "be", while the "recipient" will be "turned off". Which is understandable, because we accept that consciousness, as expressed through the brain function (and through no other organ -- sorry, not even the heart, young lovers!), is paramount.

Ergo:

If sometime in the future
- we accept the moral legitimacy of cloning humans and constructing life, and
- we construct human-like robots

then it would be inconsistent (and, hence, "immoral") to "turn off" a human consciousness, whether it resides in a robot or in a carbon-only, uterus-made human.

To see this more clearly we could engage in the thought experiment of having a bona fide human's brain transplanted into a human-like robot's head. Would we be supposed to treat that robot, carrying the human's brain, any differently than a proper human ?