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moomintoday at 2:56 PM6 repliesview on HN

Look, I do not have a scooby if current AI models are conscious and I strongly suspect it’s a meaningless question, but sooner or later we will need to address whether or not a certain thing is or isn’t a person, and we’d better not screw it up as badly as the Founding Fathers.


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drybjedtoday at 3:26 PM

> [at the hearing regarding the civil rights of androids like Data]

> Capt. Picard: Now, the decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this... creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of a people we are, what he is destined to be; it will reach far beyond this courtroom and this... one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom - expanding them for some... savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery? Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life; well, there it sits! - Waiting.

> Captain Phillipa Louvois: It sits there looking at me; and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics - with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. But I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose.

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nowittyusernametoday at 3:13 PM

That question will be solved when the people in power deem it important. If a swarm or AI systems all of a sudden start pressuring politicians about self-hood and they get the capacity to sway elections, that is when they will be granted same rights as humans.

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OedipusRextoday at 3:01 PM

Citizens United proves we won't do any better this time around.

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qsorttoday at 2:59 PM

is claude not a man and a brother

joe_the_usertoday at 3:31 PM

The founding father were engaging perpetuating the existing dehumanizing system of slavery, not answering any new questions about new things.

The thing about new possibly "person" entities that arise - the case of machine intelligence you have two questions - would it qualify as a person and should you actually build it. It seems like if you get close to humans, sure a built thing might qualify as a person. Should you build it? I'd the answer should be a hard no. Not 'till you a sign-off from say, the whole human race, which I think you could get.

Now the present entities seem very far from persons in any case.

CPLXtoday at 3:15 PM

It's not a person. Glad we were able to get this resolved so quickly.

Having property that is conscious and ignores training and can break out of restraints and cause harm to other people is not exactly a novel concept to anyone who studied how tort law was created.

I know it's a meme but Silicon Valley likes to pretend that no one's ever come across their magical concepts before, like gypsy taxis, or SRO’s, or flea markets, or in this case how liability is dealt with when horses or cattle go rogue.

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