Conference quark::human_relations-v1

509.0. "Human simulation - is it moral?" by ELESYS::JASNIEWSKI (I know from just bein' around) Thu May 05 1988 11:42

	[Much of the wording used in this entry was plaglarized from
Chapter 13 "Can a made up mind be moral" of the book "Tensions of Choice"
Author unknown, wordings reprinted without permission.]

	Someday, you might see a reply in notes that was generated by a
autonomous program running on a machine!

	ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE! What will the impact of this technology
be on our society? Though there may be built-in safegards, which, say, deprive 
"robots" of the ability to do any physical harm to their human creators, many 
other kinds of injury could still ocurr...

	Take the Television as an example of a technology imparted upon 
society - no the whole human race! For 10 maybe 50 thousand years, we humans
have had the same basic reality set. Only in the last 50 years have we had
the opportunity to engage in a completely different reality, the one portrayed
to us on the TV. What impact on the *species* will this have? Probably no one 
knows...Perhaps a global lack of imagination outside of an image context? 

	So it goes with artificial intelligence. The decision to have it or 
not is ours, likewise what it will look like and the uses it will be put to.
Your first impulse might be that we should apply it to *everything* that it
can be applied to. But there could be domains where computers ought not to 
"intrude", whether or not it is feasable for them to do so. An example is
"where such intrusion represents an attack on life itself, where the effects
can easily be seen to be irreversible and the side effects are not entirely 
forseeable, (such as) where a computer system is proposed as a substitute for 
a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding and love."

	Such a machine might be a conversational I/O simulation of a 
psychotherapist...Other examples actually now exist as marketable products, I
recall reading about an "electronic pet" containing a microprocessor "That 
will someday replace real pets" intended of course for children... 
Conversational electronic pets, robot "dolls" are therefore not outside the 
scope of possibility.

	Is it amoral to construct such a machine, intended for sale to the 
general public? Who will end up valuing themselves the less for yielding their
autonomy to such a machine - coming to *need* it? Are there exceptions that
might make sense?

	What is the social impact as the distinction between "man as human"
and "man as machine" get's a little greyer due to the presence of these kinds
of devices? What is it about the computer that's brought the view of man as 
machine up to a new level of plausability? Perhaps because the computer has
similar attributes, such as "context", "priority", "interrupts" and the
"subconscious kernal", the "conscious supervisor"?

	A MIT scientist, Joseph Weisenbaum believes "that we've embraced the 
machine metaphor as a description of ourselves and our institutions much too 
readily, that in this embrace we're in acute danger of yielding what is 
essentialy human - our dignity, our love, our trust - to ideas and artifacts 
that dont deserve it and may destroy us once and for all."

	Also: "that we, all of us, have made the world too much into a 
computer, and that this remaking of the world in the image of the computer 
started long before there were any electronic computers."

	Hmmmmm...sounds like a business I know of...

	Tools are not mere adjuncts to human developement, but themselves 
shape our understanding of the world and ourselves in it, influencing human 
imagination in unexpected ways. If humans normally show strong attachment to 
and involvement with their tools - a car as a tool for getting somewhere, 
an electric guitar as a tool for making music, a computer terminal as a tool
for conversing with others - it's hardly suprising that a machine that extends 
human intelligence will demand greater attachment and involvement. Just where 
will the imagination lead to, say, if a persons entire developmental years were 
intimately linked to an autonomous, artificially intelligent device?

	I'd guess they'd be pretty f*cked up. And in a way that no one has
experienced, because this hasn't happened - yet!

	Joe Jas

     
    Package Body Modern_Life is 
         Lifestyle:Life := mechanistic;
    
         Begin
              While (NotDead) Loop
                   Get up;
                   Go to office, airport, do whatever till late at night;
                   Come (home);
                   Cook (supper);
                   Watch (MacNeil and Lehrer);
                   Sleep;
              End Loop;       
         End Modern_Life;