I love the accessible way you wrote this article thanks and I loved that thought experiment. I’m going to test it on more people tomorrow.… I’m interested in this statement
”Whatever you feel about this thought experiment, I believe that most people in that situation would feel compelled to grant the robots basic rights.” I would like to actually poll this because I’m not entirely sure its true, I’d be 50⁄50 on what the general public would think. My instinct was that I’m fine dissecting the robot, and I told the story to my wife and she was all good with it too.
There’s an episode in the series “The Good Life” where a similar-ish thing happens and they “kill” a “robot” called Janet several times. The people I watched that with weren’t that perturbed at the time.
Good times with anecdata. I could well just be hanging out with edgeish of the bell-curve kind of people as well.
IMO Sentience be Sentience. I’m more compelled by the argument that there’s a high chance we won’t be able to figure out if its there or not.
I think there is a difference between what people would say about the case and what they would do if actually in it. The question of what people would say is interesting—I’m curious how your polling goes. But it is easier to support an intellectual stance when you’re not confronted by the ramifications of your choice. (Of course, I can also see it going the other way, if we think the ramifications of your choice would harm you instead of the robot.)
That may be true that the real life reaction may be different from what is sad, but I can’t test it and like you said it could swing both ways. I think its good as much as possible to test what can be tested and lean towards evidence over theory, even when the evidence isn’t great. Maybe this is a bit of a difference between the inclinations of us GHD folks and AI safety folks too.
I agree! I’m used to armchair reflection, but this is really an empirical question. So much of the other discussion this week has focused on sentience. It would be good to get a sense if this wasn’t the crux for the public.
I love the accessible way you wrote this article thanks and I loved that thought experiment. I’m going to test it on more people tomorrow.… I’m interested in this statement
”Whatever you feel about this thought experiment, I believe that most people in that situation would feel compelled to grant the robots basic rights.” I would like to actually poll this because I’m not entirely sure its true, I’d be 50⁄50 on what the general public would think. My instinct was that I’m fine dissecting the robot, and I told the story to my wife and she was all good with it too.
There’s an episode in the series “The Good Life” where a similar-ish thing happens and they “kill” a “robot” called Janet several times. The people I watched that with weren’t that perturbed at the time.
Good times with anecdata. I could well just be hanging out with edgeish of the bell-curve kind of people as well.
IMO Sentience be Sentience. I’m more compelled by the argument that there’s a high chance we won’t be able to figure out if its there or not.
I think there is a difference between what people would say about the case and what they would do if actually in it. The question of what people would say is interesting—I’m curious how your polling goes. But it is easier to support an intellectual stance when you’re not confronted by the ramifications of your choice. (Of course, I can also see it going the other way, if we think the ramifications of your choice would harm you instead of the robot.)
That may be true that the real life reaction may be different from what is sad, but I can’t test it and like you said it could swing both ways. I think its good as much as possible to test what can be tested and lean towards evidence over theory, even when the evidence isn’t great. Maybe this is a bit of a difference between the inclinations of us GHD folks and AI safety folks too.
I agree! I’m used to armchair reflection, but this is really an empirical question. So much of the other discussion this week has focused on sentience. It would be good to get a sense if this wasn’t the crux for the public.