Is it Ethical to Program an Intelligent Robot So that it Will Want to Be Your Slave?

[Dinner]

It was actually a bio engineered intelligent pig which wants to be your slave and be eaten. BTW I'd say no it is not ethical.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why?

[giblets]

It was actually a bio engineered intelligent pig which wants to be your slave and be eaten. BTW I'd say no it is not ethical.

If you're talking about the restaurant at the end of the universe it was a cow.

[giblets]

The quadruped Dish of the Day is an Ameglian Major Cow, a ruminant specifically bred to not only have the desire to be eaten, but to be capable of saying so quite clearly and distinctly. When asked if he would like to see the Dish of the Day, Zaphod replies, "We'll meet the meat." The Major Cow's quite vocal and emphatic desire to be consumed by Milliways' patrons is the most revolting thing that Arthur Dent has ever heard, and the Dish is nonplussed by a queasy Arthur's subsequent order of a green salad, since it knows "many vegetables that are very clear" on the point of not wanting to be eaten — which was part of the reason for the creation of the Ameglian Major Cow in the first place. After Zaphod orders four rare steaks, the Dish announces that it is nipping off to the kitchen to shoot itself. Though it states, "I'll be very humane," this does not comfort Arthur at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_characters#Dish_of_the_Day

Not a pig. Oerdin is always wrong

[Hauldren Collider]

That was one of my favorite parts of that book.

[Dinner]

If you're talking about the restaurant at the end of the universe it was a cow.

That's right. It's been a while since I read the book.

[KrazyHorse]

This may be the most interesting question to ever have been asked on poly. Congrats, gribby.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why would it be unethical? Is it because we would be unhappy if we were servants? Consider how some people are happy to work in places that most of us would be incredibly unhappy working in. They choose it. They enjoy it. Perhaps their brain is wired that way, differently from ours. Is it unethical to employ them?

Consider--Dogs have been bred to enjoy serving humans at menial or dangerous tasks for millenia. No one (well, almost no one) considers the use of dogs as working animals to be unethical.

If they were deliberately created to enjoy unpleasant tasks, why would it be unethical to employ them for such tasks? They would not consider themselves to be suffering, so why should we?

[giblets]

Why would it be unethical? Is it because we would be unhappy if we were servants? Consider how some people are happy to work in places that most of us would be incredibly unhappy working in. They choose it. They enjoy it. Perhaps their brain is wired that way, differently from ours. Is it unethical to employ them?

Consider--Dogs have been bred to enjoy serving humans at menial or dangerous tasks for millenia. No one (well, almost no one) considers the use of dogs as working animals to be unethical.

If they were deliberately created to enjoy unpleasant tasks, why would it be unethical to employ them for such tasks? They would not consider themselves to be suffering, so why should we?

I think there's a problem with comparing possibly sentient machines to animals we believe are sentient. When animals feel happy, there is a chemical process that triggers the subjective experience of pleasure and they like it and want more. A robot is simply programmed to act in a certain way. It might be self-aware and have subjective experiences of sight, hearing, etc., but can you possibly determine if a robot is actually happy with its existence and doing what it likes or is it just trapped following a program and basically watching itself behave as a slave? How could you write a program that will allow the robot to signal that it is having a subjective experience?

[Aeson]

I think there's a problem with comparing possibly sentient machines to animals we believe are sentient. When animals feel happy, there is a chemical process that triggers the subjective experience of pleasure and they like it and want more. A robot is simply programmed to act in a certain way. It might be self-aware and have subjective experiences of sight, hearing, etc., but can you possibly determine if a robot is actually happy with its existence and doing what it likes or is it just trapped following a program and basically watching itself behave as a slave? How could you write a program that will allow the robot to signal that it is having a subjective experience?

There actually is no difference here. (Outside actually knowing what sentience is and how it functions.) We take expressions of other people and even animals as to their will/state of being at face value, even though we can't actually verify it. While it's possible we are very wrong in those assumptions, we have no way to actually verify it, so it's not worth worrying about.

Also, sentience is much less understood and much more complex than the chemical processes which we already understand pretty well. If we are to assume that we have the technological capability to create sentient beings, it would seem absurd to say we cannot create rewards and pleasurable stimulus for them (or even for ourselves... which we do all the time already).

[Jon Miller]

Some Christian theodicy suggests that this is the reason we were given free will and that there is sin (or rebellion or distance from God) in the world. It is because God decided it wasn't ethical to make His creations slaves.

JM

[MikeH]

We already do this don't we?

[Jon Miller]

Do we have intelligent robots?

JM

[Aeson]

I think he's referring to procreation.

[Jon Miller]

In my younger, crazy, days I favored having the state raise all children.

JM