Can a robot be a person?

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

Can a person be a robot?

Can robots have the same "rights" as a person?



Is this the latest in the move to "transhumanism?"

[Smilephantomhive]

Only if they develope a consciousness.

[Tactical Turtleneck]

Consciousness - Wikipedia

So suppose we design an AI to be self-aware. How do we even begin to determine if it is truly self aware or if its supposed self-awareness is just part of an elaborate algorithm or subroutine? And for that matter, could we then argue that human self-awareness/consciousness is itself just part of elaborate biological algorithms/subroutines?

If so, then the debate would boil down to biological vs synthetic rights.

How do we even define LIFE?

Life - Wikipedia

NASA -
Life's Working Definition: Does It Work?




Personally I take a very broad or liberal view, that life is defined not just as cellular organisms. For instance, I would consider that celestial objects like stars also go through a life. Since all organic life on this planet is sustained due to a very precarious and delicate balance of things like planetary orbits, distances between the moon and sun and earth, et al, I think LIFE is much broader than just the cellular organisms occupying this planet, but that's just my take.

[Qlip]

As far as I'm concerned self-consciousness = human and deserves human rights. It's a little too early to get excited about it, though.

[Tactical Turtleneck]

As far as I'm concerned self-consciousness = human and deserves human rights. It's a little too early to get excited about it, though.

Early, yes, but it won't be all that long. Possibly in our lifetimes, so it's probably a good idea to get this out of the way sooner than later.

[Tactical Turtleneck]

[Tactical Turtleneck]

Zombies on the Web – David Chalmers

There are two related ideas that turn up elsewhere in the philosophical and psychological literature.
The first is that of a functional zombie, a non-conscious system physically different from but functionally isomorphic to a normal human. For example, a system with silicon chips instead of neurons. (This idea also goes by the more prosaic name of "absent qualia".) Some use the logical possibility of such a functional zombie to argue against reductive functionalist theories of consciousness (which hold that consciousness = functioning). Some go further and argue that functional zombies might even exist in the actual world, suggesting that any form of functionalism or artificial intelligence is doomed. Others (like me) deny that functional zombies could actually exist, so that AI is not threatened.
The other related idea is that of the zombie within, which has recently gotten some play in psychology and neuroscience. It turns out that quite a lot of human activity can be accomplished unconsciously — e.g. unconscious perception, memory, and learning. And some (notably Milner and Goodale ) have argued that there are major neural pathways devoted to unconscious processing of visual inputs that leads directly to motor action. This has led some to suggest that each of us contains a “zombie within” that unconsciously produces many of our motor responses, without our realizing it.

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Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

[Population: 1]

I can’t really condemn Ava for her actions. She was born/created in captivity by a brilliant but rather unstable human being who treated her not as a life form but as an experiment. He manipulated her and studied her like a lab rat and if this was to be her first exposure to humanity what example did that set for her? If he was the template from which she judged humans she not only emulated his behavior, she surpassed him in his ‘humanity’. In this case he reaped what he sowed. Caleb was an unfortunate victim of the harvest. Nathan was a bad parent.

[Peter Deadpan]

It depends entirely on the quality of the orgasms.

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I should just leave the forum right now...