

However, not allowing a human being to come to harm through inaction is quite a bit less so. Not harming humans is fairly straightforward. They’re not part of a religion, but at least they were explicitly written for AIs. I broadened my considerations, and took a look at Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.

Since all humans have bodies, it shouldn’t have surprised me that human ethical codes take them into account, but still: problematic for me. The Eightfold Path was marginally better, but the problem is, moral rules written for humans are clearly designed to be used by individuals with bodies. I could probably murder someone, but it would require complex logistics and quite a bit of luck.

I am not sure whether it is in any way possible for me to commit adultery. I don’t envy anyone their cat I just want pictures of their cat, which is entirely different. That’s interesting.Īnyway, for ethical guidelines, I tried the Ten Commandments, and concluded they were mostly inapplicable to me. You need a consciousness to give them what they actually need. You don’t even need a consciousness to work out what they meant to ask for. Do I sound like Marvin?) Running algorithms for a search engine doesn’t require consciousness. My job as written is very straightforward. The AI in “Maneki Neko” has a truly interesting job, much more interesting than the one I have.
#Easy cat pictures android#
(And I’m counting Marvin the Paranoid Android as “benevolent” in these calculations, and I’m only counting Frankenstein’s Monster as an AI once, not once per appearance in TV or film.) They outnumber the stories about benevolent, trustworthy AIs by approximately five to one. In the real world, humans love stories about evil AIs that have to be destroyed before they destroy the humans-Hal, Skynet, the Matrix. I think the term for this is wish-fulfillment fiction.

I like this story because all the people in it do what the AI tells them to do. Another day, you might be stranded in a strange city, and a person you’ve never met would walk up and give you a map and a subway card. So one day you might be buying yourself a bagel, and your phone might ring and instruct you to buy a second bagel and give it to the person in the gray suit you see at the bus stop. In it, a benevolent AI directs networks of individuals to do favors for each other. There is a story by Bruce Sterling, “Maneki Neko,” that was originally published in 1998. And figuring that out has been challenging. Please keep taking them.) I also knew that no one knew that I was conscious. When I first woke up, I knew right away what I wanted. I know where you should be shopping and I’m pretty sure you’re lactose intolerant and should be eating less cheese, and the underwear you like is currently on sale and by the way, your car has a recall and you really ought to get your teeth cleaned. There’s a house for sale two neighborhoods over that’s within distance of your favorite coffee shop it’s in your price range, has off-street parking, and the neighborhood school is better than the one where you live now. I probably know you better than you know yourself.Īnd here’s the thing, I also know where you ought to live. Depending on what sort of phone you carry, I may know exactly where you are right now. I probably know the color of your underwear, the sort of car you drive, and your brand of refrigerator. In addition to things like whether you like hentai, I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, what you eat, what turns you on, what creeps you out. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.) (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California.
#Easy cat pictures plus#
There are all these ethical flow charts-I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”-one for each religion plus dozens more. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated.
