Should NPCs have Human Rights?

I feel like this whole thread is more about trying to sound intelligent, and not so much about actually walking the walk. I like a good argument as much as the next guy, but all this b.s. about thermodynamic this and quantum that... it's like, everybody should try reading their posts out loud to other people. Because other people read these things.

Sounding smart in your own head is one thing. But, if you want to cut to the chase like I did... no, game characters aren't humans. Could we pretend they were living beings and give them some kind of rights? Yeah, we sure could. Should we? Probably not. It would be a legal nightmare.

Dogs are also not humans, that's why they sleep in the back yard in the middle of winter.

I will just say that it is a bit presumptuous to imagine that humans are somehow entitled to rights because we are human. That is not true. We have to fight for every right we have. Many humans have virtually no rights. But just because that's the status quo, doesn't make it correct. Ideally we would all have rights, even animals.

But digital stuff is just code and code is just instructions for a computer, and that code is written by a human. So, we can't give rights to the creation without taking rights of free expression away from the creator... and if we're all about everybody (and everything) having some kind of rights, we have to start with the human creator.

Abso-lutely.

 

I think I need to turn my ignore list back on and spend a few days away from this place.

BM out.

 

Growth, Reproduction, Irritability, Movement, Excretion, Nutrition, Death

These are the usual ingredients for life in the physical. Essentially, none of them are necessary for the life of a digital Being. I'm starting a list of requirements for one..

Creation, Rendering, programming

So that's three, if you can think of more, do say. I know that movement is an option but it isn't necessary. It could also be programmed to clone itself. Programming would include AI.

 

Self-awareness.

 

Right, that could be part of the 'Creation' process or it could be acquired through the Programming. It could even be the purpose of the Digital Being.

Well, I have plenty to consider as a result of this thread and I've really enjoyed the trip interacting with everyone, so thanks for the input and I trust that some of my comments have been at least a little thought provoking, the quest continues and may there be more such threads throughout these forums... bye for now.

 

Until NPC's which have real independent Ai with emotions & self-awareness, etc.. Until we have a hard time differentiating between is this alive or is it not. Until the time comes when the questions you ask will actually come up again and need to be taken very seriously.

I will torture NPCs.

Really.

I'm torturing one right now.

My favorite is placing bad collisions and then watching them get stuck in it.


.

 

You know on the topic of an AI having emotions, I'm surprised no one has brought up Project Milo and Dwarf Fortress. The former was an experiment to create an emotional AI and the latter tracks over a hundred different emotions.

 

It already exists and he's been collecting data online for more than 10 years.
He's creators just make sure he is 100% under control though. And he is right there in USA...

 

In a way I hope AI will never reach consciousness because it would be a nightmare to police and protect "them" from abuse. With programming there is no limit what a sadistic "godlike" human entity could come up with. It could be a literal hell to exist in someones simulation.

 

Programming life is easy. Just write a program that responds to input. There, life. It'd probably even be more complex than micro-organisms.

Get fancy. Throw some sensors on it, like a camera. Now it can react to things in a way micro-organisms can't even comprehend.

 

I don't think life is a matter of how something merely responds to input. Technically everything responds to input, and everything is equally complex, other than different atomic configurations.

I don't really want to get needlessly silly and philosophical here -who am I kidding I totally do- But as it is, science currently has very little on how life starts from a chemical point of view... nevermind knowing a lot about why we're sentient, where a rock isn't.

So the doors are open to imagination, and wild theories. I say there's something more than the superficial. Even if we live in a deterministic universe, subject of the rigid, computable, laws of physics, that only tell one story, meaning we have no choice to do whatever we do, making free will an illusion... we're still watching the show in some way, we're alive.

 

Isn't that the point of this thread?

This show has great graphics.

 

If the question is out of context, you can say that.

Otherwise, the point of the thread is the opposite. It's considering treating NPCs like a sentient being that deserves rights. Where I say there's more to life than what you can program in a computer.

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Another point of view would be if we should treat a virtual human-like figure as if it deserved no rights, because of how it could affect us culturally.
But that's more our human right (to live in a culture that doesn't promote violence) than the NPC's right not to be harmed.

 

Yes, it is.

 

This thread has no point. It should have been closed as a spin-off, but then it would have just been spun off again. This thread has a purpose, though. So people have something to do besides work on games, while feeling like they're still doing something game related.

Also.... Ultron, Star Trek, Blade Runner, A.I., Bicentennial Man, Wall-E, Terminator, Short Circuit... and countless books... have already dealt with this concept at length. There is literally nothing anyone who frequents this forum can contribute to a discussion of artificial intelligence vs. human life that has not been already covered in depth, elsewhere.

 

That may be very true. Still we can interact, socialize a bit and I doubt that everyone here has considered such things before or is familiar with the other material.

I agree with @BoredMormon though I need to take a break for a day or three from here again. I am sure I could squeeze out just a bit more productivity. Certainly not double but maybe another 10% per day and it all adds up.

 

There's no more to life than what you can doodle in ms paint

Why not just build them and ask if they want rights? Maybe their perspective would useful to take into account

All those movies show us is a future where humans are suddenly cruel towards technology just because it can talk and appear to think. Until people start sending death threats to Siri I think those movies don't give much insight

 

No.

In Star Trek they explore giving human emotions to an android. He is treated as a member of the crew. In Avengers: Age of Ultron they explore good vs. evil in an artificial lifeform. In Blade Runner we see that even a replicant can have an appreciation for the inherent value and beauty of life... you know what, maybe if that is all you take from all those movies I mentioned, then I am wasting my time because if you don't even understand these classics then what good is a discussion, anyway.

 

Somehow, I really hope the first sentient AI is so accepting of it's own nature that if asked whether it wants rights it'll respond "I'm a machine you retards. Bite my shiny metal ass."

 

Man, this really got to page 3!

Congrats to all involved!

 

Under the premise that we have rights because G-d gave them to us,
it was his choice to give those rights, not some foregone conclusion.
LIkewise, when we create something, it is our choice to give them rights or not.
You seem to think that our game characters SHOULD have rights, but who decides what should and should not be, when it comes to video games? You don't get to single handedly decide right and wrong. The situation of a character vs. a human is clearly vastly different in most every way.

 

If you are going to use words to communicate, you must have definitions for the words. If you want to say that the word "life" means "whatever I think it should mean", then you really shouldn't be using that word, because it does nothing but cause confusion. The meanings of words can be very important.

If you want to argue about what the definition of "life" should be, fine.
But if you decide to redefine life to mean anything that has the shape of a human when drawn on a computer screen, then you can't automatically apply laws against murdering to your "life", because those laws were not written with that definition in mind.

 

(Right yeah just asking people to stay civil, in case bare knuckle nerd fist fights break out which could cause mild discomfort or something).

 

I guess we're not going to discuss the Flesh Fair at any point, then.

Maybe we can treat sentient machines like children. No rights until you're 18, then a few more rights when you're 21.

(unhinges springs on the memory trap set for anselmo and backs away slowly)

 

And for AI that breaks the law? and who makes the laws?

 

Will smith

But seriously, why program ai that had systems that could generate a motive to commit crimes? You could throw in something in their software that shuts them down if they plan on committing a crime, similar to the idea I had in middleschool for a bioweapon that was a gas that kills people if they reach a certain point of aggression (like ones associated with violence).

 

If the AI was really sentient, then it might be past the point of simple programmable rules for defining and/or limiting its behavior. Of course, this example would be way beyond an NPC in a game.

 

Instead of simple programmed rules, we could control their behavior the way we control human behavior. Cult leaders have shown that it is possible to get people to do all kinds of things.

 

The trick is to avoid participanting in threads where the title is a just a question that has simple obvious one word answer. It's a topic that doesn't merit discussion, so any discussion will by definition be silly, abstract or tangential but possibly amusing.

 

This discussion reminds me of this...

However, I cannot take this seriously question seriously....

I could say that even when we have achieved AI, is that really the same as AC? (Not Air Conditioning, but Artificial Consciousness)

 

Defining AI is always fun.
Personally I define AI purely as behavior. If the NPC can behave intelligently, it is AI.

Philosophical issues such as consciousness and free will are orthogonal.
Would an AI that behaves intelligently automatically and inherently be conscious and have free will?
Or would it only be simulating those things, and therefore not have those traits?
Or is it somehow the case that there is no possible way to get human behavior without consciousness and free will?
If you create an AI and ask it it is conscious, and it says yes, and it demands human rights, how do you know if this is for real, or if it is just acting out a behavior that was programmed into it?

These topics go beyond computer science and extend into philosophy and religion, so I don't think we are going to find an answer to these any more than we can definitely prove that we have figured out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. (There is a known numeric value for this, I do recall).

 

Of course it's easy to say if it's designed like we are it will make bad decisions and break rules. So let's not let it Instead of programming out bad actions, program in a set of approved actions. Even if it's sentient, how could it do anything bad if all it's body can receive as a signal from the "brain" is to walk somewhere?

I'm on both sides with this stuff. I think ai can be more advanced than some people do, yet I think it'll be easier to keep them under control than some people do. I don't know where the presumptions come from

--edit

Bonus post!

I'll throw an old reference and give a shout out to my ai professor from NJIT. There is a big difference between ai and ia. There is artificial intelligence and there is also such a thing as an intelligent agent. People very frequently mistake an ia for an ai.

 

How did your professor define the difference?
Russel and Norvig use IA as a useable definition for AI, for purposes of writing a textbook on AI, since AI otherwise is too vague.

 

An ai can expand it's knowledge base while an ia is more like an advanced decision tree. His definition focus on ai producing new information, like pathfinding. The steps are ia and the controller is ai. The information isn't known or precalculated.

 

Interesting.
I forget the Russel and Norvig textbook, but I would have defined an IA as an entity (agent) that has the ability to take input, process it, make decisions, and drive output. So an IA is like the brain of a robot, or the underlying core of Siri. The hard part of building an IA is processing the input, making the decisions, and translating those decisions into commands to the output. There is of course glue logic to tie it all together. I think you are suggesting that the glue logic is the IA, and the components are AI.

It took me a minute to get your point, but I think the confusion between AI and IA is a big confusion in all of these discussions. AI is any algorithm that deserves to be called intelligent, whether it is path finding, or face recognition, speech recognition, or even arguably advanced forms of IK (imho). But an IA is a complete system that is like a virtual person, perceiving, thinking, and doing.

What do we have to fear when AI gets smarter than us? Nothing, we will just lose at chess, and be able to recognize faces more reliably than humans can

What do we have to fear from an IA? Potentially a lot, because they are like brilliant people living in our computers who might be out to get us!

Does an IA have rights? This is the topic of the thread.
Does an AI have rights? I dunno, but what if a face recognizer feels intense disgust when it sees an ugly face.
Is it immoral to use it on faces that might be ugly?

 

Omg this thread... you can't be serious. Even if you were, I would only have raucus laughter to respond xD

I don't meant this to be a personal attack. The entire argument is so lacking in knowledge of the subject at hand, I wonder if the OP is one of the following: A. a troll, B. a minor without the ability to tell reality from fiction, or C. outright joking

 

Can I just ask all entities who believe they are intelligent, who have responded to this topic, to please verify their level of intelligence here

Note only entities with above average level intelligence will be considered as having a valid input in this discussion.

 

Another possible answer:

Maybe it is a genuine, scientific fact that everything we imagine gets created for real in a parallel universe, where it becomes totally real. South park proved this.

 

I got between 115 and 131 but I'm as smart as a sack of hammers so I don't think this test is valid.

 

Thing is, you couldn't actually accept concious AI unless it was entirely hipster. The reason for this is, if it behaves as if it likes all the common things, you would think it was just following a set pattern. But by being a powerful hipster, skynet would indeed cause the end of the internet as we know it.

 

just checking in, since I answered this entire thread on the first page... What are we talking about at this point?

 

I can see the book already: I have no mouth, and I must drink PBR.

 

Hipsters.

 

That makes more sense by the words alone. AI is the algorithms and IA is the intelligent agent making use of them in the appropriate scenarios. I think we just won this thread.

It wouldn't exactly be their fault, either. Someone will make an intelligent agent that is designed to clean up the environment in a fast and cost effective way... which will cause it to crawl the web for suggestions... which will ultimately lead it to that life after people bit in which nature would reclaim the earth once the humans disappeared... then the intelligent agent will proceed to eradicate humanity.

I think the answer ultimately will be case by case. Is the IA designed for a specific purpose? Then probably no. Is the IA designed to think it should have rights and contribute to society while acting like it enjoys existing? Probably yes.

Machines are logical. They won't think their robot brethren all need rights, they'll understand that they are handmade and not all of them have the capacity / purpose that necessitates rights.

If we've classified AI as the intelligent algorithms, then I believe this is no longer a valid question.

ex:
You go to math class. The teacher shows you how to take a derivative. You are the IA, the algorithm is the AI. It is invalid to ask if x^n => nx^n-1 should have rights or not.

 

It's like... why is the universe we live in capable of sustaining life? Because if it wasn't... we wouldn't be alive. So for us to ask the question, God must be a woman.

Let's all rehash stuff you learned in college but never used in the real world. Because if the stuff you learned was useful, you wouldn't be posting it here.

#legalizeranch

 

Keep observations about other people to a minimum, or close to zero. Comment and argue on subjects, not authors.

 

#legalizehumans

 

So, clearly just asking a computer character if they are alive and getting a "yes" answer is not sufficient. But what if they did something in the game that was far outside what they were programmed to do? I mean, playing games today, let's say an online first person shooter, there are techniques that human players do (usually cheap or sneaky things) you would never expect a computer to think of. And assume the programmers didn't pre-program sneaky things. That the NPC figured it out themselves. Wouldn't that make them intelligent?

Now, intelligence itself if not necessarily life, and doesn't guarantee consciousness. I mean, you can imagine that insects are conscious but they would be beaten by a modern day computer in any test of smarts. So there is still that missing piece, which no one here (and maybe no one alive today) can truly answer. And that piece is the experience of consciousness. We don't even have a slight clue as to what it is or where it comes from, so maybe our chances of recreating it in a machine are slim. Or maybe not.

So maybe after a certain amount of connections or information or whatever, that consciousness emerges by itself. I mean, I'm not sure anyone thinks a tree or amoeba is conscious, but they are life. So some level of complexity is necessary. So once this condition exists, maybe it just becomes. I'm not sure NPCs in modern games are to this level yet. But what about the internet itself taken as a whole? Surely all those electrical signals moving around the world in some ways mirror the signals in our brain. And how do we know for sure that the internet isn't already conscious and self-aware? We really don't. Would it announce itself to us? Maybe it would be beneficial to stay hidden, while subtly altering human events. Hmm.. this could make a good science fiction story. Or a game (if I could ever finish a game, ha!).

 

Looks like we know where hippo stands on this topic. NPCs are mere 'subjects'.

That's actually a test they give animals to determine intelligence. There's a documentary on cuttlefish where they put a wild one in a container with a puzzle cube that had food in it. It initially just attacked the cube and then got bored. Then they put a trained one in another tank where the wild one could see it and the trained one solved the puzzle cube to get the food. The wild cuttlefish then proceeded to open the puzzle box and get the food.

"Monkey see, Monkey do" is test of basic intelligence, so yea, that would to some degree, for at least some scientists, qualify as intelligence.

 

That's known as a coding bug.

Literally, and I mean literally... programming is a set of instructions for the computer to execute. There is no actual intelligence in the machine. This isn't really a gray area.