Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it okay to knock someone unconscious and then wake them up again?
Sure, people do that all the time, every day. They’re called anesthesiologists.
the obvious differentiator being consent...
If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
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Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#12Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, people do that all the time, every day. They’re called anesthesiologists.
the obvious differentiator being consent...
Not really. People who come into a hospital unresponsive may need emergency surgery. In that case, obtaining consent from them is impossible, yet, ER docs, anesthesiologists, and surgeons clearly have no ethical problem administering general anesthesia without consent, in such a case.
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#142 deep 4 me. BTW. The "soul" issue precedes this problem. According to experts, one- or two-cell organisms have already a soul and jerking off is thus a crime. So metering machine consciousness is in vain, as every transistor is already sacred. However there will probably be great philosophical divide here, as reformists will proclaim that only powered two-transistor flipflops demonstrate life and have soul.
Think of the inverse. It's possible to arrange a living creature to provably not have a human (or animal) style consciousness. By definition we say that plants are not conscious the way humans are conscious. Even if they do possess a soul they probably lack the ability to perceive the world through pain, vision or thought. So just build a human shaped creature that lacks the ability to perceive the world. Therefore consciousness is a property that is created by the creature itself.
The conclusion is that you can build a conscious robot. Instead of thinking about turning it off you first have to think about turning it on. Is it ethical to bring children into this world, knowing that they will eventually die? If so then it would be equally ethical to do it to a robot.
So if you have accepted that your robot will be turned off eventually it is no longer relevant whether it happens. Rather it is all about the situation in which a robot will be turned off. We accept that all humans eventually die but we also wish for humans to delay their death as long as possible. It would be similar with robots. We will turn them off when the situation requires it but we also want to avoid it as much as possible.
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#15Have we ever questioned killing chickens? Robots, however, will win our hearts like dogs and cats, we will be generally good to them, but we do frequently put down them when necessary (or unnecessary?)
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#16What if it’s a trillion robots? What happens if they want to vote? Human vote wouldn’t even be a rounding error.
I for one...
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#17If it is conscious, can't it answer this question for itself?
Animals (especially ones like apes and dolphins) may be conscious, yet couldn't answer the question.
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#18To run with the example, GPT-3 is obviously not self-aware, and therefore cannot feel pain or have a sense of self.
But what if we change that? Run a recurrent GPT-3 instance where (a) some of its prompt input is a description of the current state of its own process, system, and environs, (b) the prompt defines certain of these stimuli as "painful" and to be avoided (and others "joyful" and to be sought out), and (c) the prompt instructs GPT-3 to respond as an individual experiencing these phenomena.
What then visibly/measurably differentiates this "self-aware" GPT-3 server from any other conscious entity? Or is consciousness necessarily not visible/measurable and thus unscientific?
Moreover -- what if consciousness is easy to create, simply by meeting the requirements of self-awareness, and ability to experience and respond to qualia? Having a tool like GPT-3, which can compute how existing conscious beings might react to any given qualia, just makes such an artificial consciousness more intelligent and relatable.
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#19Have we ever questioned killing chickens? Robots, however, will win our hearts like dogs and cats, we will be generally good to them, but we do frequently put down them when necessary (or unnecessary?)
> Have we ever questioned killing chickens?
Absolutely: veganism. The chicken welfare question is generally more about their suffering than their deaths.
Re: If a robot is conscious, is it OK to turn it off?
#20Have we ever questioned killing chickens? Robots, however, will win our hearts like dogs and cats, we will be generally good to them, but we do frequently put down them when necessary (or unnecessary?)
> Have we ever questioned killing chickens? Absolutely: veganism. The chicken welfare question is generally more about their suffering than their deaths.
As an anti-speciest vegetarian, I believe it would be murder to turn off a machine that develops a sense of self-consciousness or of preferences.