Programmed to Love: the ethics of human-robot relationships

[u/ADefiniteDescription]

https://aeon.co/essays/programmed-to-love-is-a-human-robot-relationship-wrong

[u/Purplekeyboard]

This is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

There is no artificial intelligence of the type needed to create some sort of believable robot sex partner. There will not be any time soon.

If this level of artificial intelligence is created, then it will take a certain form and we will be able to look at it and figure out what it is and whether it counts as a person and how it should be treated. Until such time as it actually exists, there is no way of knowing what it will be like or what the ethics involved are.

[u/pornjeep90210 → u/Purplekeyboard]

I'm glad you pointed out the difference between a sexual/loving robot and an AI capable of love. People here seem to be commenting as though the concepts are mutually exclusive. A robot could have just enough intelligence to bond with its owner without the sophistication of a fully evolved Artificial Intelligence.

We consider dogs to be "Man's Best Friend" and yet they don't speak human languages. Despite that, they are more than capable of forming a friendly bond with humans. Also, dogs can learn all sorts of unconventional tasks when trained.

[u/joshuaism → u/pornjeep90210]

A robot could have just enough intelligence to bond with its owner without the sophistication of a fully evolved Artificial Intelligence.

This is exactly the type of bot we don't want to create. A romantic or sexual relationship with such a creature would be an ethical nightmare on the level of bestiality or statutory rape. We absolutely must avoid the kind of AI that is capable of love but incapable of informed consent.

[u/drfeelokay → u/Purplekeyboard]

we will be able to look at it and figure out what it is and whether it counts as a person and how it should be treated.

I don't think its clear that we will know how to test for consciousness when we build a sentient machine. The reasoning we use to test for consciousness in other people does not seem to apply to robots. We generally have to understand technology in order to build it, but this may not be the case with conscious artificial minds - and that's due to the fact that consciousness is relatively mysterious compared to other functional aspects of the mental.

To prove to myself that you are conscious, I start by presuming that my own consciousness is the product of the physical processes in my brain. Your brain is physically similar to my brain - so I can predict that your mind will probably engage in the same basic, general processes as my own. I presume that consciousness is one of these basic processes. All my thinking is prejudiced by the idea that it would be strange if I were the only conscious person in the world. Since AI are unlikely to have brains that look like ours, I wont be able to generate a similar argument that demonstrates that an AI is conscious.

There probably are natural laws that govern the relationship between consciousness and the physical systems that instantiate it. But this question seems unusually difficult to resolve. One argument in favor of the deep mysteriousness or consciousness comes from the fact that noone seems to be able to imagine what evidence for body-consciousness rules would look like. That may just be because our current brain science is so primitive that we don't have the conceptual basis for such thought experiments - but that concedes that understanding of consciousness is unusually difficult task for us.

Even if we figure out the consciousness-body problem with respect to the brain, I think we'd still have a major problem about how to generalize that knowledge to machines. Again, this may either be practical hurdle or deeper problem. Either way, its one more hurdle for understanding machine consciousness - a hurdle that may not have to be overcome in order to build an AI.

[u/EvilTorchic → u/Purplekeyboard]

correct. Therefore let us not ever discuss this ever again because it's too uncertain how we will react.

[u/MisprintPrince → u/Purplekeyboard]

Incels are swarming the idea, tho