Robot Passover

Here's a video which seems doubly-appropriate because it came to my attention at Passover time, and when we've been discussing robots and artificial intelligence in class. So I wish a happy Passover to all who celebrate it - human or not!

HT Thoughts In A Haystack

What is a Soul?

I have never really felt like I understood what exactly people meant when they said soul. If I had to define it I would say that your soul is just your internal sense of self, your own sense of who you are or the you that you are in your head. Dictionary.com defines a soul in many different ways, but here are the ways that I find the most relevant.
1.the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.
2. the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come: arguing the immortality of the soul.
3. the disembodied spirit of a deceased person: He feared the soul of the deceased would haunt him.
4. the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments.
5. a human being; person.
I think these definitions help to clarify my own position. A soul is not your human body, but your mental existence. It your sense of individuality, humanity and self. Some of the definitions include ideas about the afterlife and assume that your essence or soul will survive your body's death. In regards to robots and their potential rights I can image a robot with the self awareness and personality that would make me think that it does have a soul and deserves rights. However I don't know that I would be able to believe that a man made being's essence or soul would live on after it was destroyed or shut down. If a robot can't have a soul that lives on after system shutdown then presumably we don't have to worry about robot conversion. If we ever do reach I time when robots are given rights and recognized as sentient I think that it may bring about questioning of the widely held belief in life after death. After all, if robots can seem human to people, but we deny that they can have some sort of afterlife what makes us so sure that we will have an afterlife?

If we look within our own human history alot of groups have fought to gain rights. Whether it be for their religion, sex, race, or ethnicity all people want is to be treated equally. We humans understand this human want to gain equality but what if things/objects wanted to gain equal rights, such as animals, plants, and the earth? We have humans who are fighting for the fair treatment of animals and the planet, but we never look at this as a form of gaining equality. Is equality the same as fair treatment?

Seven-of-Nine

Our class discussion today put me in mind of Star Trek: Voyager and the character Seven-of-Nine. Is she human? She was as a child, but then assimilation into the Borg did something to her that causes her to function in many "automated" ways that are sort of Vulcan-like and Data-like at the same time. Does she have a soul? How might it have been affected by the Borg?

Artificial Intelligence & Racism

After discussing the idea of artificial intelligence, I was left with a lot more questions.

(I’ll call them robots for the sake of space in this blog posting.)

Do robots have rights? Would we add constitutional amendments guaranteeing them rights? Would it take years for robots to gain equal rights like it did for African-Americans and women?

What happens if the robots are faced with racism? Would it even be considered racism if someone discriminated against the robots? Would the robots be considered a new race or would they be considered an offshoot of the human race since we would be their creators?

Second Life

I’m not sure how many people have heard about second life but some interesting things have happened on it. Second life is where you have your own little avatar and basically live in a digital world. In class we briefly talked about if something happens virtually world if it has the same meaning. For example in second life there was one particular avatar that mess up the system and went around raping other avatars. I’m not sure what entire happened to the person who went around raping other people’s avatar but I do know that they were at least going to charge this person with criminal matters. People whose avatars were raped were damaged from the incident since the avatars represented who they were as people. Some people might look at that and think it absurd but these avatars were part of these people’s identities and they felt that the person was attacking them personally. If someone had some type of religious ceremony with their avatar people might not think that it is worth anything. However the avatar represents who these people are and sometimes people are more willing to be themselves in these virtual realties than they are in really life.

Do cylons have human feelings?

I personally think that if robots are able to grow and mature that should be given the same right as humans. One of my favorite science fiction shows of all time is the new Battlestar Galactica. In the show there are cylons which are not your typical robots. The cyclons believe in God in fact they believe in the one true God. One reason that cyclons stick out to me as being human is their ability to change between the same models of cyclons. In the show the number six model have many different unique personalities. One of them is Caprica she originally starts off by being a key part to destroying the majority of the human race. However throughout the series we see her start to not only love humans but to become protective of them. In one episode one of the six models kills a human because this particular human kept killing her again and again for no given reason. Every time she felt pain and had the memory of her death she did not forget it and her death became part of how she was. Another cyclons that is key character in this show is Athena. Athena is one of the number 8 models. Athena goes against her kind in order to be with the person who she loves this being is human. She was originally supposed to just mate with this person and move on. However she eventually tells Helo everything and they escape and these two characters are probably the most stable couple in the entire show. If we are made human by the ability to chose and feel for others it is clear that cylons are able to do this.