RE: Envisioning sysop scenarios Re: Universal Uplift as an alternativeto the Sysop scenario

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@webmind.com)
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 19:47:08 MST


> > But Samantha, the notion of "physical destructiveness" is itself
> > anthropomorphic.
>
> Naw

I didn't phrase my point very clearly, I'm afraid.

For a human, there's a pretty rigid line between a verbal attack and a
physical attack. Even so, many physical attacks (e.g. a slap in the face)
are not physically destructive, just painful.

On the other hand, for a computer program, there is a much fuzzier line.
Programs exchanging declarative knowledge is the analogue of verbal
exchange. Programs exchanging procedural knowledge (subroutines) can be the
analogue of a physical interaction, but can also be more like verbal
exchange in some cases. I'm not sure it will so easy in a world of
intelligent software to define what kinds of aggression are "socially
unacceptable" and what kinds are OK.

The essence of the issue is that human conversations don't involve exchange
of brain material... the introduction of this kind of conversation makes
"verbal"-type exchange verge on the physical, among intelligent software
programs...

ben



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