Robots: Sentient Beings or Efficient Machines
Recent controlversial issues have come up on whether robots can ever be sentient enough to classify them as "Humans" In "The Age os Spiritual machines" by Ray Kurzweil, a technology experts bring up the fact that in the recent future, possibly within fifty years, robots would have become sentient enough to have acute emotional intelligence. Already, some robots in Japan are teaching classes or being health aides, and their usefulness only expands as they become more and more efficient. No one has had a problem with taking advantage of that fact as they're just sophisticated machines created by humans.
But some experts argue that these machines may soon have an emotional component in them, an ability to feel for lack of better word. They'll be given human like qualities, but should that translate to us necessarily giving them rights as well? Perhaps they can never be humans, but they would probably reach close enough that they could demand- and possibly force- the rights from us. Do we have an obligation to give it to them? Even if they're our creations, if they become "alive" than are they our equals? Or even second class citizens to humanity?
They have emotions.
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I don't see a heart. Do you?
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Emotivity is a faculty which syntheitic beings could develop, they dont have them yet, except as programs of analyzing our facial expressions. Emotivity is partly the ability to understand emotions in others (empathetical capacity). Syntheitic consciousness could exceed ours. People think of robots as being human creations and are thus limited by our engineering abilities, however, although we are integral to their coming into being, there are ways for computers and thus robots to evolve independent of human intervention. It is actually likely that in the next 10, and certainly in the next 20 years, that the greatest advancements in robotics and AI will be the result of simulated evolutionary processes which create new and better ways of attaining robotic and cognitive abilities. Theoretically, by the year ~2040 syntheitic processing capacity will reach the processing capacity of the human brain ~100 million million calculations per second. Once this level is attained robots could easily exceed us in terms of intelligence. This is the theoretical prediction and demonstrated trend of robotics and the engineering of AI. Side: They have emotions.
I also think that insofar as we attribute them the quality of being sentient we should also give them rights. I think of the concept of Dasein. If these beings were capable of ontology, and their emotions are manifested in the same complexity as our own we should definitely give them rights and respect them as the first non-organic advanced consciousness in existence (to our knowledge) Side: They have emotions.
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They may in the future develop emotions as technically speaking an emotion is a neural signal/electric signal which the robots may be fully capable of doing providing they become advanced enough. Also theoretically a robot can reproduce/create. However this all comes down to whether they are advanced enough and have to capacities to do such things as of now. In the future though they may develop emotions/gain a possible self-conscious. Side: They have emotions.
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Even better! We've got creatures with intelligence and emotion but never the irrationality that plagues the human race! It's already pretty much expected that we'll become so dependent on these creatures to live our lives (as their decisions are less irrational, they'll most likely be given reigns of control over society, however reluctantly, by our race until we've become hopelessly dependent on them) In a way, we can argue that they're better, so shouldn't we give them the rights before they take it from us? Side: They have emotions.
the capacity for robots to feel and think the way we do is not necessary for them to be sentient and think complex thoughts. Just because it is different doesnt mean they are not equal in level of experience or their deserving of rights. In a way, saying that they would need to think and feel the way we do would be similar to telling someone that if they feel differently than you do about any topic then they are less deserving of rights than you. It is anthropocentric rather than dasein-centric. We ought to think of synthetic intelligence as a different kind of dasein (see Martin Heidegger's work if you are unfamiliar with the concept of Dasein) Side: They have emotions.
Well if one looks at it all animals are nothing but a mass of energy of various accounts being manipulated to satisfy a need a want which is to survive as long as it can, and to survive a living organism has to be able to learn from mistakes and be able to adapt, so in theory if man is smart enough to come up with an algorithm as stated by someone earlier for a robot or machine to have want and need to survive that should be all that's needed for it to be able to start becoming sentient beings. This is just a guess out of the air so idk. Side: I don't see a heart. Do you?
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Could that be an advantage then? There's already paranoid thoughts of robots being the successors to the human race so wouldn't their more logical, just enough emotion to matter, perspective make them better evolutionary candidates. They'll have the best of mankind- perhaps even better than the best- with less of our undesirable qualities. They'll care but not enough for it to overtly influence their logical choices. On a purely philosophical note though: God gave us free will so should we do the same for the robots? Side: They have emotions.
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wouldn't their more logical, just enough emotion to matter, perspective make them better evolutionary candidates. No, because a robot can't evolve. At least not without human input. Much like God, again. They'll care but not enough for it to overtly influence their logical choices. At what point do you determine what too much care is? Giving a robot limitless emotions means that they suffer the same flaws as humans. Giving them limited emotions means that they can't do certain things. Unless they have both, they can't be better than humans. And they can't have both. On a purely philosophical note though: God gave us free will so should we do the same for the robots? Well, I don't believe in God. Nor do I believe that if he exists, he gives us free will. But if we presuppose his existence for the sake of the question... Yes. But then what purpose would they have? If we gave them enough emotion for them to choose not to serve us, why bother with them? Side: I don't see a heart. Do you?
Sentience in no way requires the existence of god, and the created is only the created insofar as its coming into existence is a direct application of human mind and body in the manufacturing of the thing in question, however, there have already been simulations in which robots were "engineered" in an evolutionary environment and were selected for by effectiveness in performing a certain task, these designs were then 3D printed and were assembled, in this respect humans were only necessary to set up the process of evolution, they were not integral to the design. This could happen on a much more advanced level and sentience in syntheic beings could be attained. Side: They have emotions.
I'm not going to make this a debate about religion but to refute your point, some of us do not believe in a god, so saying we're equal/superior makes no sense. As far as the creation being superior to the creator, if you think of evolution as a process of producing gradually more complex lifeforms over time, then it's very possible the creations can outperform their ancestors/creators. Of course a lot depends on how you define "superior" too. If you're talking about outperforming their creator, a calculator can do math much faster than the engineers who build it. Side: They have emotions.
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