Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: August 13, 2025, 9:32 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics
#1
Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics
I recently reread Carl Sagan's essay 'In Defense Of Robots', in which he makes his usually eloquent case for the unmanned exploration of space, among other things.

In the essay, he stresses the point that unmanned space vehicles will necessarily have to become more intelligent if they are to remain the best option for this type of work. But he stops short of at what seems (to me, at least) to be a vitally important question:  At what point does machine intelligence make it unethical to use spacebots for suicide missions?

Since Sagan wrote the piece in the late 1970s and even since his death almost a quarter century ago, machine intelligence has grown tremendously.  The self-awareness/sentience of computers appears to be a matter of not 'if', but 'when'.  Do we have any ethical justification for sending a machine of even rudimentary self-awareness to, say, Venus (where it will almost certainly be fried) or Jupiter (where it will almost certainly be crushed)?

I know that in the earliest days of space exploration dogs and chimps were used as test subjects and no one minded all that much.  But there is a feeling about animal 'rights' today that did not exist even a generation ago.  Might not the same be eventually true of machines?

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply



Messages In This Thread
Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by BrianSoddingBoru4 - May 26, 2019 at 3:24 pm
RE: Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by brewer - May 26, 2019 at 3:37 pm
RE: Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by brewer - May 26, 2019 at 6:32 pm
RE: Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by Sal - May 26, 2019 at 3:44 pm
RE: Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by AFTT47 - May 26, 2019 at 6:11 pm
RE: Machine Intelligence and Human Ethics - by Angrboda - May 27, 2019 at 11:11 am

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Atheism and Ethics Lucian 262 30988 August 4, 2024 at 9:51 am
Last Post: Disagreeable
  Ethics of Neutrality John 6IX Breezy 16 3229 November 20, 2023 at 8:40 am
Last Post: Gawdzilla Sama
  Ethics of Fashion John 6IX Breezy 60 8683 August 9, 2022 at 3:11 pm
Last Post: The Grand Nudger
  [Serious] Ethics Disagreeable 44 7592 March 23, 2022 at 7:09 pm
Last Post: deepend
Information I hate human race,civilization and people in groups. MountainsWinAgain 48 19171 March 25, 2020 at 11:21 pm
Last Post: Macoleco
  Feral Children and the initial human state WinterHold 1 1296 December 10, 2018 at 5:00 am
Last Post: Maketakunai
  What is the point of multiple types of ethics? Macoleco 12 2099 October 2, 2018 at 12:35 pm
Last Post: robvalue
  Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics vulcanlogician 150 28641 January 30, 2018 at 11:01 pm
Last Post: bennyboy
  (LONG) "I Don't Know" as a Good Answer in Ethics vulcanlogician 69 14704 November 27, 2017 at 1:10 am
Last Post: vulcanlogician
  what are you ethics based on justin 50 20380 February 24, 2017 at 8:30 pm
Last Post: ignoramus



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)