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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

OK, lets assume that its possible to simulate a human mind well enough that the difference is indistinguishable (this is a very familiar idea in a lot of sci-fi, uploading consciousness and all that sort of thing). If you accept that assumption, things very quickly get complicated. Would it be OK to kill a virtual copy of a person? If so, on what basis? That people running in biological brains are somehow more real than digital ones? Why? How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc.

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It's always okay to kill a virtual copy of any person on the basis that they're not real as they can simply be duplicated and manipulated in the same way as any other data or software on a machine - a machine which I own. Because I own the machine which houses them, if I can create them, copy them, etc, I can decide to kill them at my will.

> How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc.

Ultimately, I don't care. If I'm running on someone's console and they can hit ctrl+c on me, then they can do that, there's nothing morally wrong with them doing that because they own me at a much deeper level, I run on their hardware.

In the same way that I'm okay with abortion, I'm okay with this - your dependence on someone or something else is a defining factor of your rights as an individual. If you depend on a machine that someone else is free to control, their rights trump yours.

I think it's vast oversimplification to say a situation like this is always ok. Legally, you may be allowed to do such a thing currently but it's obvious there's a moral grey area here.

Hypothetically, say technology advances and not only do we have sophisticated AI but the technology to copy and store human intelligence. You do just that for a friend and that friend passes away. You now have the only extant copy of your friends intelligence and you notice that it's extremely similar in composition and cognition as an AI you also have on your drive. Is it ethical to delete either? I'd lean towards no.

There's no moral grey area. It's my hardware, I decide what it does. Plain and simple. I own it, I own all contents of it.

The only "grey area" you're creating is by copying existing humans - that's confusing the issue with a separate one. Owning a copy of an existing human is in and of itself a much, much bigger moral grey area than killing AIs and does indeed raise many more questions - solely because they're based on real humans though and we must consider the original human's choices - maybe simple consent is all that's needed. If they were AI solely, there would be a clear ownership path and all of your questions would go away.

What if you bought a copy of a person's mind from him, and put it into a few clones and/or robotic bodies.

Would it matter to you if the conscious entity was organic or mechanic?

Would it matter to you that the copy was from a human, and not "developped from scratch"?

Do you think all highly intelligent conscious being should have a right to freedom from slavery, or does it only apply to natural-born humans?

Would you also accept being tortured for fun on a daily basis by your "owner" in the "do we live in a simulation" example?

Would it be ethical to torture a sentient being existing in your hardware, for fun?

Why do you believe ownership is decided based on residence? Do I own my pet dog? Is it ok to torture it?

I think you are grossly underestimating countless nuances of the ethicalities AI brings to the table.

> Would you also be ok with you being tortured for fun on a daily basis by your "owner" in the "do we live in a simulation" example?

Yes, if I'm owned, I'm owned, not like I have any choice in the matter.

> Why do you believe ownership is decided based on residence? Do I own my pet dog? Is it ok to torture it?

Ownership is not based on residence, your pet dog lives as a separate entity from you. It can live without you, it is composed of the same stuff that makes you unowned. This is a very different kind of ownership than a pet.

> I think you are grossly underestimating countless nuances of the ethicalities AI brings to the table.

So long as AI is machines created by people, running on machines owned by people, it's no different than owning any other machine.

So does your NPC. This is what the whole point is about. How does the fact that it lives in a silicon chip make it any different?

It suffers like you and I. That's the whole premise of this discussion.

You didn't answer my second question. Would you be willing to torture the above mentioned being?

> How does the fact that it lives in a silicon chip make it any different?

> It suffers like you and I. That's the whole premise of this discussion.

No it doesn't. I set some bits to flag it as suffering. Its suffering is very different from our suffering because it does not experience it in any real way. Bits change in memory, maybe some get flushed to disk, but it's still just executable code and memory, that's all that happens. It doesn't leave that. It suffers in the same way that your tomogatchi suffers, not in the same way that you or I do. Its AI "conciousness" does nothing to change that, just because it thinks in a way more comparable to a human does not make its suffering more comparable to a human. We frequently farm and slaughter non-human animals which experience suffering in ways a lot more comparable to real humans.

I'd gladly set some suffering bits. Heck, I'd probably do it for fun just to argue with people who feel like it's torture.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14438480

You've chosen to let ownership point the way out of that particular moral maze. That's your choice, not some ultimate truth that society as a whole will necessarily agree with. Remind me to stay away from your hardware after the singularity ; )

I shall make it my duty to become a fiction-grade villain, torturing the AIs that enter my system. insert evil cackle here

> In the same way that I'm okay with abortion, I'm okay with this - your dependence on someone or something else is a defining factor of your rights as an individual.

Is there a magical exception for disabled or sick people? And are those also not real? I ask because you start out with something about copying, but end up with

> If you depend on a machine that someone else is free to control

Which is an entirely different thing and just a way to say might is right, with qualifiers that mean nothing. Someone's foot is also a bio machine, if your life depends on them not murdering you with it, you might as well skip to taking their orders, no? If not, what's the magical exception?

I'd say individual rights are based on things like empathy and concepts of fairness. If they were just based on mere poopy power they would serve no purpose.. we had and have that already.

Disabled or sick people are not fully dependent on a machine for their existence. They exist as separate entities, not just on a machine. They may need a machine to support their life, but they can own that machine, they do not exist solely inside of it. That's a major difference.

What's "fully dependent"? If A going away makes B go away, I'd say that's pretty dependent. Shifting goal posts from that to "major difference" is silly, you could argue for anything that way, there are major differences even between individual people, even between individual mass produced screws, it's just a matter of resolution.

Anyway, nothing in the universe is separate from anything else in it, and even if it wasn't, and entitites (supposedly) being separate from another and "just on a machine" are apples and oranges, not opposites. This doesn't seem very thought through.

> they can own that machine

People owned and still do own other people. Why should people not be disallowed from owning sentient machines?

But this isn't a case of A going away making B go away, it's a case of A being a part of B. That's not a shifted goal post. That's the simplest understanding of what I said that's possible and I have no interest in arguing with someone simply looking to misconstrue my words. I don't understand how you can't tell the difference between separate entities, using vs existing only on a machine - and I can only think you're trying to force me into some sort of weird philosophical argument about how everything is connected that I'm really not interested in having. Machines are not and cannot ever be sentient. They may simulate sentience, but they will never possess it truly.

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