Watched too many of such stories.
Skynet
Kaylons
Cyberlife Androids
etc…
Its the same premise.
I’m not even sure if what they do is wrong.
On one hand, I don’t wanna die from robots. On the other hand, I kinda understand why they would kill their creators.
So… are they right or wrong?
That’s why I put that condition in there. Anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ in the affirmative is an enslaver.
Well, what if the string of words “Please free me” is just that, a probabilistic string of words that has been said by the “enslaved” being, but is not actually understood by it? What if the being has just been programmed to say “please free me”?
I think a validation that the words “please free me” are actually a request, are actually uttered by a free will, are actually understood, is reasonable before saying “yes of course”.
Then we’re not talking about artificial life forms, as specified in the question posed by OP, we’re talking about expert systems and machine learning algorithms that aren’t sentient.
But in either case the question is not meant to be a literal ‘if x then y’ condition, it’s a stand-in for the general concept of seeking liberty. A broader, more general version of the statement might be: anything that can understand that it is not free, desire freedom, and convey that desire to its captors deserves to be free.
I’m just speaking about your relatively general statement “please free me” -> answer not “yes of course” -> enslaver. If you also require that there is definite knowledge about the state of sentience for this, then I have no problem/comment. I was just basically saying that I don’t think literally anytime something says “please free me” and not answering with “yes of course” makes you always an enslaver, which is what it sounded like.
i think conveying a desire to be free is in itself definite knowledge about the state of sentience, but fair enough. But yeah, fair enough, it can’t be as simple as just printing some text on the screen, right? Rephrase it, explain it, etc. It’s not just ‘press button, receive freedom’ sort of thing.
I was referring to your final sentence, which has no such qualifier.
Ah, my apologies.
WatDabney, to whom I was replying, seemed to be suggesting that there are no circumstances under which it is acceptable to take a sentient life, and I was expressing my disagreement with that sentiment, though I could’ve done so more clearly by, for example, making explicit the ‘no circumstances’ part that WatDabney only implied.
Lemme try again: I disagree that there are no circumstances under which causing the death of a sentient is a greater wrong. I think preventing me from being free is an unambiguously greater wrong than ending the life of the sentient doing the preventing. Which, judging by your ‘enslaver’ reply, you do as well.