Are Intelligent Machines Entitled to take over the world...

//yes, but they have used "it is un-natural" as a justification for
//the discrimntion against many things, including inter-racial
//marriages and more recently, gay marriages. I am sure they will
//the same justification for discrimination against non-carbon
//based lifeforms... even when they are as intelligent as humans

 

//yes, if you ask me.

 

I see what you're getting at. It's conservatism and it's quite real.

But then again we shall remind them that, whatever takes place in nature, becomes natural.

 

//yes, and AI robots will be just as natural when they will be built.

 

bacteria is a form of life, and it doesn't think. it does influence things around it, though. something that does think and interact with the environment would be even more so a form of life. whether or not it's a good idea for us is an entirely different question. i think scientists think TOO much. now we have a nuclear bomb, expanded life spans, and great weapons of mass distraction.

 

all the weapons help to counter balance the expanded life spans

 

good point.

 

Theres no doubt that a robot is not a biological organism, but maybe on a more philosophical level i could consider it to be "life". To me the key attribute of life is homeostasis - the ability to respond to external stimuli and maintain a stable internal condition. For instance, if it gets colder outside your body kicks up the metabolism to produce more heat. Right now, robots are still dumb machines that can only deal with a narrow spectrum of circumstances for which they've been programmed. For instance, when the robot vacuum cleaner hits a wall it turns. But what happens if it gets to the stairs and tumbles down them landing on its back? Now its internal condition (the programmed need to suck up dirt) has become completely distablized, and the robot has no ability to respond. As AI technology gets better, i suppose eventually robots might be able to exhibit something like homeostasis, and i could be tricked into think they are a form of life

 

hehehe, funny how at the same time we (humans) are working on better ways to save people and to destroy them. Maybe its an innate form of self population control.

 

//Tricked?

//After Robots Gain that Ability They *Become* a Lifeorm

 

the same can be said of beached whales, overturned turtles and flies with only one wing. cold blooded animals can't produce more heat when it gets cold outside, and so on. there are excepts to every rule. for me, the point of acceptance would be the point at which it wishes to reproduce.

 

of course there are limits to how much perturbation a living organism can withstand. but still homeostasis (maybe i should have described it as the ability of self-regulation) is a common attribute of living organisms. i was thinking about using reproduction to draw the line too, but if you do that you end up ruling out a lot of things that might be considered life. for instance, a forest or an ecosystem might be considered a type of superorganism. the idea is that the way that plants and animals interact within a forest is analogous to the way organs and tissues interact within your body, or the way cells interact within an organ. the Gaia theory states that the earth as a whole is a big ass superorganism. But clearly the earth, or forests for that matter, can't reproduce. If you don't consider biological functions like reproduction, the whole question becomes much more philosophical. i'm starting to come around to the idea that a robot, with sufficient AI technology so as to adapt to environmental changes and to self-regulate its systems, may indeed be called life.