Comments on: UK Government Report Talks Robot Rights

By: John Kennard

John Kennard — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:36:49 +0000

So we’re posturing about robot rights without a glimmer on the legal horizon of civil rights for animals? not even for those which dream (all mammals, all birds, some reptiles)? not even for primates, cats and dogs?

By: www.mathematics.mil

www.mathematics.mil — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:33:29 +0000

To “Mir Private server”(xiaonanok March 3rd,2007 12:13 am): They have a real background in the eighties as we
used the Russian Molnar satellite systens as an uplink.

By: Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:46:09 +0000

Whether or not I can kick something depends on whether or not it feels. Because of the “other minds problem” (and Descartes) the only one that I can be certain feels is myself. Other people almost certainly feel, because they act exactly the way I do. So I assume they feel too. In fact it feels as if they feel (because I am biologically programmed by my genes to “mind-read” certain behaviors as signaling certain feelings: smiles, frowns, screams).

So I’m almost certain you feel, and almost as certain a dog does too, and that a rock doesn’t, and probably not a plant either. Or a toaster. Or a computer. Or any of today’s robots. When will I become as doubtful that a robot doesn’t feel as I am confident that you do? When I can’t tell the two of you apart — in terms of what you can (both) do.

It is our doings on which the judgment is based in both cases, or rather on our capacity for doing. That is what Turing’s Test is based on, and it is designing a candidate that can pass Turing’s Test (of indistinguishability from human beings to that is both the goal of cognitive science and the criterion for whether or not there should be laws, one day, to give robots equal protection under the law (or at least as much as their animal counterparts are accorded).

Harnad, S. (2001) Spielberg’s AI: Another Cuddly No-Brainer. http://cogprints.org/2131/

Harnad, S. (2006) The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery and Intelligence. In: Epstein, Robert & Peters, Grace (Eds.) The Turing Test Sourcebook: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Kluwer http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7741/

By: D. Berleant

D. Berleant — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:23:09 +0000

The article states: "Human-level AI could be invented within 50 years, if not much sooner. Our supercomputers are already approaching the computing power of the human brain, and the software end of things is starting to progress steadily." Well..."could be" also means "might not be". Even worse, "is starting to progress steadily" is an oxymoron. In fact, software productivity is increasing by several percent per year, in marked contrast to commonly quoted hardware metrics (e.g. "Moore's Law") which increase much faster. So software is likely to be the bottleneck and who knows how long it will take to solve the intelligent software problem. One thing's for sure, the timing of the AI singularity is not governed by Moore's Law. So this little article is fun to read but suffers from journalistically simple-minded overhype. No point in writing your congressman about robot rights just yet.