Future Law

[BroomJockey]

http://www.cracked.com/article/192_6...eed-in-future/

It's rather sad that such awesome research and thought-provoking material comes from a comedy web-site. But that's not the point of this thread.

The point is, what do people think of these ideas? Mandatory life span limits? Would those be necessary if we started colonizing space? After all, the social change issue would still be present.

Genetics laws to mandate alterations. Think about it. You could have been altered before the womb to never suffer from depression or other mental illnesses, to have no genetic predisposition to cancer or any genetic disease. We're currently saving people from these diseases while they suffer from them. Is it right to ensure that a future person never suffers from it by changing the building blocks of who they are?

Sex laws. Most guys think it'd be awesome to have a hooker-bot (Don't lie guys, you've thought it at least once). Something designed purely for casual sex. No people hurt, you can do whatever. But then you get to illegal stuff. What about a kid-bot.

Slavery. Because if robots do advance to that point, would it be slavery? Would the fact that we'd built them make that okay in your eyes? For the religious: would they have a soul? Would that matter if they did or didn't? For the non-religious: If they demonstrated all the traits of sapience and sentience, would that be enough for you to think it's wrong? What criteria would you need satisfied if not?

[Flyndaran]

Killing people because they have reached an arbitrary age is still murder.
Only when genetic alterations get very safe and affordable would mandatory gene fixing be ethical. We m
Why would having sex with a robot that looks like a kid be illegal? It's a freaking robot, it doesn't have rights.
Slavery is unreasonable control of sapient creatures. Robots would be programmed to do their job. Full autonomy would be useless and dangerous for anyone to put in a robot. Besides, they couldn't have feelings to hurt.

[Nyoibo]

Killing people because they have reached an arbitrary age is still murder.

They have government sanctioned murder anyway.

Why would having sex with a robot that looks like a kid be illegal? It's a freaking robot, it doesn't have rights.

For the same reason that having images that depict sex with children is illegal.

Slavery is unreasonable control of sapient creatures. Robots would be programmed to do their job. Full autonomy would be useless and dangerous for anyone to put in a robot. Besides, they couldn't have feelings to hurt.

I get the feeling you missed the point, they're not talking about a robot that puts together a car, something that follows a set routine, they're talking about a fully developed AI, something that learns grows and is self aware, as you've stated emphatically before, you don't believe in the supernatural or anything like that, so you don't believe in a soul, so what makes a self aware AI different from a human?

[joe hx]

Why would having sex with a robot that looks like a kid be illegal? It's a freaking robot, it doesn't have rights.

From what I understand, having sex with (or just having) a blow-up doll that looks like a kid is illegal. Sort of like having drawn/animated child porn is illegal.

[kamn]

Id say life span laws would be wrong. Then again, if people can live up to 400 or more, then they would probably be able-bodied for at elast half that time as well, so retirement laws would change.

Parent law I'd somewhat support. If your genetic material was used, if you had sex with him/her/it and produced a baby that way, you are the parent/guardian/temporaryslaveholder If there was no sex in the process, no parent has a right to them. They would "belong" to society and would probably be visiting the orphanage. Doesn't matter at who's costs the child was made.

Slavery? I'd say that idealy, any robot that can even remotely pass a "humanity" test would be given the similar if not the same rights as any human. Those that cannot pass such a thing do not have a will/personality/soul and can and will be exploited for labor. The problem being at where exactly would one transcend into the other.

Cloning laws argument is a bit flawed. If one can grow the whole body, why not the individual organs (sometthing that can partly be done today)? If the clone was made, he/she would get every and all rights that any other human would.
The problem being, what if it was a clone of a serial killer( for example)? One who has yet to commit a single crime? What if the killer had died without anybody knowing? The DNA says it was him. Only way I can see would be to download the clone memories (privacy invasion?) and check if it was that one? These are the ones off the top of my head.

[BroomJockey]

Id say life span laws would be wrong. Then again, if people can live up to 400 or more, then they would probably be able-bodied for at elast half that time as well, so retirement laws would change.

Okay. Now, where's everyone going to live? Where are you going to work? Some additional jobs will be created due to increased need for certain items, and for additional service industries, but nowhere near as many as people who are living, and continue to reach working age. If retirement laws change, then it definitely gets worse. The only way for upward mobility in a job is for someone to get fired, quit, or die/retire. And quitting is usually a case of finding a better job, vacated because someone, somewhere, died/retired. So now you're stuck in the same job for 70 years, because the generation before is hanging on to theirs for a century or more. Two centuries. You may like your job, but would you want to be a cashier for 200 years? You may like your apartment, but would you want to live there for 200 years? Because you'd never be able to find a different place to live and work. Because it'd all be taken up by the generation before yours.

Don't just say "it'd be wrong." Please, put some thought in to how you'd solve the issues here. A knee-jerk "killing people is wrong" ain't going to cut it in this thread. You don't want people killed? What are we going to do with them?

[jackfaire]

Slavery is wrong period.

If the robot is sentient it is slavery

If it isn't then it is merely a tool for a job.

[Greenday]

Slavery is wrong period.

If the robot is sentient it is slavery

If it isn't then it is merely a tool for a job.

Robots can only function as much as their programming allows them to. Just because they might do some things we don't expect doesn't mean they are sentient at all. Thus it won't ever be slavery.

The one I like is population limits. We will definitely need them sooner than later.

[BroomJockey]

Just because they might do some things we don't expect doesn't mean they are sentient at all. Thus it won't ever be slavery.
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You don't believe we'll ever be able to make true AI then? (Expected by about 2030) Or be able to upload our consciousnesses to computers? (2050)

Because in those cases, we've got computers who are sentient. And then it'd be an issue.

[Greenday]

You don't believe we'll ever be able to make true AI then? (Expected by about 2030) Or be able to upload our consciousnesses to computers? (2050)

Because in those cases, we've got computers who are sentient. And then it'd be an issue.

Nah, I don't think we'll ever be able to create a machine that thinks for itself. If we could somehow transmit the mind of a person, which I question anyway, that intelligence would not be artificial.

[Nyoibo]

At the most basic level, we are machines that can think for ourselves.

[bunnyboy]

Going off of my experience as a believer in the Singularity, some of those laws would truthfully be rather a non-issue, when we can become immortal, there will most likely still be those who (like me) find that living forever will be utterly, how to put this, boring after about 200 years, and they will probably be in enough numbers that mandatory age limits will only be enacted when needed, if at all since in my own ideas, the singularity pretty much means we've gone from Homo Sapiens Terra to Homo Sapiens... uhm Galactus...Astra...Terranensis (dunno what to call the people who go out and colonize other planets/galaxies.) And the slave question, if it's gain both Sapience (the ability to think for itself) AND Sentience (acknowledging that it is an entity) then yes it does become an issue. And as for the genetic stuff, probably not, just like we have people who want to live off the land and aren't considered second class citizens well doubt those who don't get those genes removed/repaired/whatever high doubt a Gattica situation will happen. in truth we may be up coming on all the things we as 20-21st century humans hope for, but we'll probably find it as big a curse.

And anyways who wants to live forever.

[BroomJockey]

Nah, I don't think we'll ever be able to create a machine that thinks for itself. If we could somehow transmit the mind of a person, which I question anyway, that intelligence would not be artificial.

Okay, leaving alone the fact that we've made swarms of machines capable of evolving lying skills, so thinking ain't such a huge leap, you realize that all laws currently apply to "people," with a heavy bias towards "living" persons. So if you're in a machine, and you've no heartbeat, EKG, etc, current laws would not apply to you. So the point still stands.

[Greenday]

Okay, leaving alone the fact that we've made swarms of machines capable of evolving lying skills, so thinking ain't such a huge leap, you realize that all laws currently apply to "people," with a heavy bias towards "living" persons. So if you're in a machine, and you've no heartbeat, EKG, etc, current laws would not apply to you. So the point still stands.

Theoretically, whether I agree with it or not, if robots COULD think for themselves, then yes, they'd need anti-slavery laws too.

[Flyndaran]

From what I understand, having sex with (or just having) a blow-up doll that looks like a kid is illegal. Sort of like having drawn/animated child porn is illegal.

That was never really illegal. That vague "no children were harmed in the making of stuff" was struck down by the supreme court in 1996.
Here in the U.S. as long as it's fake it's legal.

I certainly believe A.I. of human and even above intelligence to be possible. My brain isn't magic. I just don't believe such hard to produce software is going to be any time soon. I think it's going to coincide with so many other unpredictable aspects of our race as to be beyond our present imagination.