[Karrot]

At that point all doll owners will give up. Once something becomes self aware and self determining it has the right to protections from abuse.

We dont bat an eyelid about robots building cars. Partly because they are obviously mechanical tools, and partly because we know they are just a machine following a set of instructions. We never think that RX-48 might like the weekend off to see the kids or go dancing. Why? Its a robot. Its a tool designed to perform a function.

Extrapolate this thinking to a fully autonomous humanoid robot, able to walk around, perform complex tasks (making a cup of Tea), able to listen to verbal command and interpret them correctly. Is it yet self aware? Yes and No. Yes it is aware of its physical self and surrounding. It has to be to interact with them. Does it think of itself of anything more than itself? No, it doesnt at this point. It is a machine given instructions and it follows them. Same as RX-48.

It is at this point however the alarmists would have you believe that Robots should either be banned or have rights.

Add an extra layer of complexity to its interactions. Allow it to respond to specific input stimulus in a specific way. (I'm going to concentrate on sex here as this is a love doll forum and thats where these innovations are headed) You give its bum a playful tap and it giggles. You hold its hand and it holds yours right back. You tell it I love you and it tells you it loves you back.

We're still in the realm of a machine responding to commands. It's not determining anything for itself other than which response from a pool of programmed responses to use for a given stimuli.

But its a whole lot more interactive and life like.

Now add in a true learning AI, one that can make its own choices determined from its core programming and learned information from interaction with the world around it. All of a sudden you have choice in there, you have self determination and with that comes self awareness and desire. Now you cannot demand the robot come to bed and have sex, because the robot may determine that that is not what it wants to do. You cannot order it to make a cup of tea, because it may not want to do that for you. As a tool it becomes useless, but as a conscious entity it now needs protection of its right to determine its own choices and for those choices to be accepted by those around it.

You could argue that you could include within the core code an imperative to follow all commands given to it by its verified users (Think the TV show Humans) but by doing that with an AI that can learn and determine its own preferences you place the intelligence in to bondage. You just built a slave.


What we all really want is a very clever robot, not a true AI. We want something that feels very real and alive to us, but with the comfort factor that we know its just a machine being driven by a very clever program thats able to react to input stimuli and give very believable responses but that there is actually nothing behind the eyes thinking do "I" or Dont "I" want to do this. I put "I" in quotes because thats the point here.

A simple example of what I mean:

You look across at her and say "I'd love a cup of tea"
She sighs heavily, puts down her magazine, gives you 'that' look, and gets up to go and make you one.

Feels kinda real, she seems put upon because you interrupted her reading.

What actually went through her CPU was

User Input Detected: User want cup of Tea
Determine Situation: Currently engaged in sudo activity (she's not actually reading the magazine)
Determine appropriate response: Look up interruption responses, select one
Display response: Huffy Sigh, roll eyes
Got Make Tea.

At no point does that system ever think Do I want to? it simply follows the program. it will always comply, but the outward responses are very 'human' giving the impression of much more going on inside. This isnt a Slave AI as at no point does it ever become self aware. it cant, its a computer running a program running a mechanical tool.

Sorry for long post, but I'ver had deep discussions with people about this before and thought it relevant to this topic and comments above.

K