Theos-Talk Archives (February 1999 Message tl00049)

> Yes, but cloning is not main place where efforts to 
create new labor class are
> to be found.  There is push in AI (artificial intelligence) branch of computer
> science.  There is low AI (creating robotic machines that are computer
> controlled) and high AI (creating human-like intelligence).  This raises
> deeper issues.  If made, will such totally artificial human-machine have soul?
> Will it be person or property?  Is such even possible?  The flipside of these
> questions is a scary, materialist, and quasi-fascist implication.  It is
> already raised in computer science, cognitive science, and engineering.  If
> these artificial intelligences are not persons, but despite appearances, are
> only a special form of non-life that appears to be life (silicon-based), then
> are humans also only a wierd form of non-life (carbon-based) not entitled to
> any special status or rights?

What I know of AI, is mostly that it is surrounded by a lot 
of publicity and hype, but that it is not very successfull. 
The recreating of even the simple skill of a bug, to walk 
around, takes so much energy, that I am not personally 
worried that a conscious being, capable of making choices 
for itself, is in the pipeline any time soon. 

That seems to me the criteria we would have to worry about. 
Can a conscious being make choices, than it should be 
allowed that freedom, if those choices do not interfere 
with the freedom of other conscious beings. 

Katinka
----------------------
NHL Leeuwarden
hesse600@tem.nhl.nl